Murder Conviction

Gregg Bernstein won a murder conviction from a Baltimore jury Friday after prosecuting his second trial as the city's state's attorney, his office announced. After roughly two days of hearing testimony and three hours of deliberation, a jury found William Carr, 50, guilty of murder, robbery and handgun crimes in connection with the June shooting death of Chong Wan Yim, a 55-year-old delivery man, outside a liquor store at the Erdman Shopping Center in Belair-Edison. Carr faces a maximum of life in prison plus 45 years at his sentencing, set for May 23. Bernstein's first prosecution ended with mixed results.

Dante Parrish, a convicted killer freed from prison with the help of the Innocence Project in a 1999 murder, was sentenced to life without parole Tuesday for murdering a 15-year-old Baltimore boy less than a year after his release. Baltimore Circuit Judge John Addison Howard quoted an old Scottish prayer when handing down the sentence, which included a second life term for attempting to sexually assault Jason Mattison Jr. before suffocating the teen with a pillowcase, slashing his throat and stuffing him in a bedroom closet in November 2009.

On March 6, 2008, William Nibblett was stabbed to death in his own home in Pokomoke City. A Worcester County Circuit Court jury convicted Charles Robert Phillips of first-degree murder and armed robbery and sentenced him to life in prison. But on Friday, the state's highest court sent the case back to trial with a blistering rebuke of local police and sheriff's deputies who the justices said ignored the suspect's request for an attorney and wrongfully kept him talking into a confession.

The state's second-highest court has overturned a murder conviction for a man who police say participated in a drug deal that ended in gunfire, which killed a Baltimore County grandmother hit by a stray bullet. Donald S. Kohler did not shoot Shirley Worcester, 58, outside her Middle River home in January 2009. Police said Kohler had cheated a dealer out of four pounds of marijuana by handing over fake money and was running away when the dealer shooting at him hit the victim instead.

I frequently disagree with Dan Rodricks ' views on criminal justice, but his column on November 30th ("Calvin Ash, political prisoner?") was particularly disgusting. To claim that Calvin Ash is a political prisoner is an insult to all those who are being persecuted simply for voicing their views in oppressive nations throughout the world. Mr. Ash was convicted of first-degree murder, a crime which most Americans would say deserves a sentence of life in prison. The fact that he is eligible for parole does not mean he has any kind of right to it, and I don't see how it's a flaw in the system that murderers who are sentenced to life are actually staying in prison for the remainder of their lives.

Baltimore prosecutors said Thursday they will retry two illegal immigrants charged with killing three young relatives in a Baltimore apartment in 2004, after their convictions were overturned last month by the state's highest court because of a judge's error. It will be the third time the city has tried Policarpio Espinoza Perez, 29, and Adan Espinoza Canela, 24, who are accused of slashing the throats of three elementary school students — ages 8, 9 and 10 — making cuts so deep the two boys and a girl were nearly decapitated.

Baltimore prosecutors have cut a deal with a woman charged in the stabbing death of a Johns Hopkins researcher, agreeing to drop murder charges in exchange for testimony against her lover in a case that became a rallying point during last year's heated state's attorney's race. Lavelva Merritt, 23, pleaded guilty to robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery, saying that her co-defendant stabbed Stephen Pitcairn last summer and that she punched the victim as he fell to the ground, stealing his cellphone while he lay there.

The state's highest court erased Friday the first-degree murder conviction and life sentence of a Baltimore woman accused in the 2007 fatal shooting of her boyfriend, ruling that city police violated her constitutional rights. Investigators should have advised Juanita Marie Robinson, now 31, of her Miranda rights — the well-known warnings that begin with, "You have the right to remain silent" — before her second and third statements about the killing of Andre McBride, the justices decided.

When a police detective tells a suspect that their conversation "is between you and me, bud," it needs to stay that way, the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled Monday, overturning a murder conviction in Baltimore County. The judges ruled unanimously that Christian Darrell Lee's admission that he shot and killed a man during a home invasion in North Point in 2006 should not have been used at his trial, at which he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life plus 110 years in prison.

Daniel Hubert Ross is still paying for killing his wife four decades ago. This is not a plea for sympathy. A jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and a judge sentenced him to spend the rest of his life behind bars in a North Carolina prison. There is no doubt that Ross shot his wife. But Ross argued that he hadn't been allowed to adequately explain his claim of self-defense, and he appealed his 1969 conviction. The case bounced through state courts, then federal courts, and finally landed in the highest court of all, the U.S. Supreme Court.