Maryland Law

A Hunt Valley attorney who admitted to having his employees sign his name to foreclosure documents was found by a Baltimore County judge to have violated three of Maryland's rules of professional conduct for lawyers, according to court records. Thomas P. Dore engaged in behavior that was "prejudicial to the administration of justice" by "routinely and repeatedly" filing "with the courts affidavits purportedly signed by him and attested to by notaries" he employed, according to court documents.

Baltimore's speed camera contractor disclosed Friday that several of the city's automated cameras have been wrongly ticketing roughly one of every 20 passing cars and trucks. Officials with Xerox State and Local Solutions told a mayoral task force studying the city's program that the five cameras have been idled and are no longer issuing $40 tickets after they found during a recent review that the devices had an error rate of 5.2 percent. Those five cameras have generated at least 15,000 tickets, city records show, translating to $600,000 in potential fines for motorists.

For hours Tuesday, Prince George's County Circuit Court Judge C. Philip Nichols listened as lawyers representing an ousted state delegate, a former drug dealer and the governor of Maryland argued over the separation of powers in government and the meaning of the word "duty. " He will weigh those arguments as he decides who - from a legal perspective - is entitled to fill the state delegate seat at least temporarily vacated by Tiffany Alston. As soon as Wednesday, Nichols will first decide whether Alston was appropriately ousted from her seat when she was convicted in October of misconduct in office, a conviction that technically vanished a month later when she paid a fine, completed community service and received what is known as a probation before judgment.

Tomorrow, gay couples across Maryland can take the first step toward equal recognition of their relationships when county clerks of courts for the first time will be allowed to issue licenses for same-sex marriages. And we may get a hint of just how equal those marriages will be on Friday, when the Supreme Court is due again to debate which, if any, of several key lawsuits about the status of same-sex marriages under federal and constitutional law it will take up during this term. One of the compromises proponents of same-sex marriage struck in order to get enough votes in the House of Delegates was a provision that prevented the new law from taking effect before midnight Dec. 31. But that left some unanswered questions.

State media keep talking about the fiscal cliff as if it will obliterate Maryland's wealth if Congress does not reach a compromise on debt talks. The truth is, cuts are far down the road if they happen, and Maryland will continue to thrive as an extension of Washington's bureaucratic complex. There is an imminent financial crisis in Maryland, however: state debt. According to the nonpartisan nonprofit State Budget Solutions, the total debt of Maryland is almost $82 billion. (www.statebudgetsolutions.org/publications/detail/state-budget-solutions-third-annual-state-debt-report-shows-total-state-debt-over-4-trillion)

This feature appears every week on the Baltimore Sports Blitz. It's just like “What They're Saying About the Ravens,” but it includes blogger Matt Vensel saying something about what those people are saying. Got it? --- Jarrett Bell of USA Today says more Ray Rice and less Joe Flacco might have resulted in a win Sunday . “A week after scratching out an overtime victory at San Diego that was stamped by Ray Rice's brilliance in converting a checkdown pass on fourth-and-29, Rice didn't have a single touch in the fourth quarter of Sunday's setback,” he wrote.

As a 25-year retired veteran of the U.S. Army Reserves, a year of which I served on active duty in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, I find Maryland lawmakers' unwillingness to support veterans' right to carry concealed handguns disheartening. Faced with serious security issues at home, veterans are either denied or don't even apply for concealed carry handgun permits. Although the state contends that it does not deny people permits, the reality contradicts that. Many veterans like myself were trained on weapons and trained others on systems ranging from assault rifles and machine guns to rockets and high explosives.

A Baltimore man has been charged in a Woodlawn rape that occurred 15 years earlier, after county investigators matched DNA evidence to an earlier case. The evidence collected in the 1997 Woodlawn case matched evidence from a 1993 city case, where police identified Ronald White, 49, as a suspect, police said. Law enforcement agencies continue to review DNA collections, after the process was briefly halted when the state's highest court blocked the collections in April. The court of appeals decision in a Wicomico County case found collections of DNA samples unconstitutional and that the practice provided access to a significant amount of personal information.

Last week was a very good one for Maryland's governor. He helped President Barack Obama win another term, increased the number of Democrats representing his state in Congress while also getting all his party's incumbents re-elected and went 7-for-7 on ballot questions, including the history-making same-sex marriage law. So perhaps he was feeling his oats. At least that would explain why Gov. Martin O'Malley so rashly told reporters - practically before the unplugged voting machines had gone cold - that he'd like the General Assembly to consider making it more difficult for a Maryland law to be petitioned to referendum.

Last Sunday in Baltimore's St. Vincent de Paul Church, its longtime pastor, the Rev. Richard T. Lawrence, delivered a thoughtful and nuanced argument for support of the Question 6 ballot referendum. This, of course, was news in Roman Catholic circles — an opinion from the pulpit fully at odds with the hierarchy of a church that has devoted much time and money to voter rejection of a Maryland law that allows couples of the same sex to wed. Lawrence is the most eloquent homilist I've ever heard.