Murder Trial

When police initially questioned John C. Gaumer about a woman who had disappeared, the UMBC student told investigators that he had dropped her off at her Hampden home after their first date and had driven back to his campus apartment. The cell phone records of both Gaumer and his date, Josie P. Brown, however, indicated otherwise, said a Baltimore police detective and a Verizon Wireless records custodian who testified yesterday on the first day of Gaumer's capital murder trial. Although Gaumer, 23, would later admit to police that he beat Brown to death in a wooded area just off a highway exit ramp after she changed her mind about going home with him, it was cell phone records that initially led investigators to the senior biochemistry major who had no criminal record, who once played college football and who still drove to southern Maryland every Friday for dinner with his parents.

Murder case dismissal shows justice system fails victims, citizensA woman waits more than three years for justice in the brutal murder of her 21-year old son, only to be told that the four defendants accused of the crime have had the charges dismissed because of repeated postponements of their trial date ("Murder case against 4 is dropped due to delays," Jan. 6).Baltimore Circuit Judge Roger W. Brown dismissed the cases because of a recent decision by the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, which threw out the sex-crime conviction of a man after his case had been postponed nine times for lack of a courtroom.

Awaiting trial in jail since December 1995, Calvin Bradshaw once filed a motion to have his case dismissed for violating his right to a speedy trial. Yesterday, he got his day in Baltimore Circuit Court: life plus 50 years for murder.His brother Chris, in jail since January 1996, got 80 years yesterday in the same execution-style slayings on a deserted street in Hampden. The brothers were convicted in the slayings April 3."I've been waiting for 2 1/2 years, and it's been hard," said Trina Lyles, niece of one of the victims.

In the event that she dies before getting a chance to testify against the man charged with killing her husband, 80-year-old Augusta Taylor of Gardenville will videotape her account of the January attack that left her unable to use the arm in which she was stabbed.Baltimore Circuit Judge Joseph McCurdy cleared the way for Taylor's recorded testimony after granting the defense a delay in the first-degree murder trial of John Henry Harris, a 56-year-old resident of Knell Avenue. Harris is charged in the fatal stabbing of his neighbor, 85-year-old James Taylor of nearby Todd Avenue.

The capital murder trial of Smith Harper Dean III, accused of killing his former girlfriend and her date, was postponed yesterday after the Hampstead pit-beef entrepreneur tried to commit suicide days before the anniversary of the killings. The trial had been scheduled to start Monday.In a letter written to a reporter at The Sun two hours before the suicide attempt was discovered, Dean said, "I'm so sorry -- the only way is out," with "out" underlined.Dean apparently hoarded anti-depression medicine and ingested a potentially lethal dose in his county Detention Center cell, authorities said.

STRANGE as it may seem, America owes Theodore J. Kaczynski a debt of gratitude. By pleading guilty to murder charges, the Unabomber has spared us all the sorry spectacle of a murder trial in which the defendant is opined to be a paranoid schizophrenic and at the same time competent to face a jury.The Kaczynski trial was shaping up as yet another travesty of justice, no less a media circus than the criminal prosecution of O. J. Simpson and, even more to the point, the Long Island Rail Road shooter, Colin Ferguson.

A Texas judge ruled yesterday that he will let Court TV air live the capital murder trial of former Naval Academy Midshipman Diane Zamora.Prosecutors had asked that television cameras be kept out of the courtroom, arguing that they would influence jurors and witnesses, some of whom might think less about justice in the high-profile case than being invited onto television talk shows and signing book contracts.But Tarrant County District Judge Joe Drago said Court TV, a cable network that shows many high-profile trials, could broadcast the trial from beginning to end, as long as it does not film jurors, spectators or family members.

A Howard County judge has postponed the capital murder trial of Smith Harper Dean III this month so mental health evaluations can be performed to determine the defendant's insanity and competency pleas, his lawyer said yesterday.Dean, 39, of Hampstead is charged with two counts of homicide in the shotgun slayings of Sharon Lee Mechalske, 38, of Hampstead and Kent Leonard Cullison, 30, an Arcadia mail carrier, in June 1997. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.Originally scheduled for June 15, Dean's trial was postponed NTC until Sept.

A Landover man who reneged on a deal with prosecutors last year when he identified a dead neighbor as a murderer instead of his brother pleaded guilty yesterday to perjury in Anne Arundel Circuit Court.Joseph L. Stewart, 22, told a grand jury in June that his brother, William D. Stewart, 25, shot at the back of a car in the parking lot of a Crofton pool hall in March 1995, prosecutors said. Catherine Elizabeth Webster, 16, of Bowie died after being shot twice in the head as she sat in the back seat of the car.When prosecutors called Joseph Stewart to testify at his brother's murder trial in November, he changed his story.

With a murder trial due to begin next week in the starvation death of 9-year-old Rita Denise Fisher, the Baltimore County Circuit Court is preparing to question 300 potential jurors -- one of the largest pools in county history."

Prosecutors and defense attorneys squared off Wednesday in opening statements in the double first-degree murder trial of a Baltimore man in what police said was an ambush outside an Odenton bar last year. Prosecutors hope to see Russell Kelscoe Harden, 26, sentenced to life without parole. But his lawyers said he was not involved in the shootings Nov. 16 that took the lives of two Annapolis men and injured two more. Shortly before the shootings, Harden was placed on house arrest for failing to comply with the terms of his release on a federal gun conviction in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

Second of two parts on the trial of a teenager in the shooting death of Deron Hope in 2007. Baltimore jurors trying to decide whether William Key shot a 16-year-old amid a dispute over a girl or executed him as part of a gang initiation ceremony sat through five days of testimony and argued for three more behind closed doors before ending deadlocked. It was only after Circuit Judge Timothy J. Doory declared a mistrial that it emerged that the lone holdout for a verdict of voluntary manslaughter instead of first- or second-degree murder, as the 11 others wanted, was a defense attorney who works for the state public defender's office in the same courthouse in which the trial took place.

The trial of four people accused of being members of an abusive cult was delayed again Tuesday after the leader and a follower chose to defend themselves against charges that they starved 2-year-old Javon Thompson to death. The murder trial has been postponed several times because Queen Antoinette, 40, and Trevia Williams, 21, said they had a lawyer when, in fact, they did not, or said they were going to hire a lawyer and never did. Prosecutors Julie Drake and Patricia McLane had attempted to have Antoinette, the leader of the defunct 1 Mind Ministries, and Williams psychologically evaluated for a possible insanity defense, but the two defendants refused to cooperate.

A Baltimore judge has removed a veteran defense attorney from a high-profile murder case after learning that he was representing the suspect as well as a witness in related criminal and civil matters. Defense attorney James Rhodes had represented Steven James Lashley, 30, who is awaiting trial in a 2005 triple stabbing near the New York Fried Chicken on The Block. Meanwhile, Rhodes had advised another client, a witness in the case, to refuse to testify at Lashley's trial out of fear she would say something incriminating.

Baltimore man convicted of second-degree murder A 23-year-old Northeast Baltimore man was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison Tuesday in the death of Jamal Hill. This was the second trial for Issac Smith of the 5600 block of Carter Ave. The state's second-highest court overturned the original first-degree murder conviction on a technicality. Baltimore Circuit Judge John C. Themelis had not asked potential jurors in 2004 whether they had any racial bias against the defendant.

The verdict in the most recent O.J. Simpson trial came and went in the dark of night in a Las Vegas courtroom. The proceedings might not have been breathlessly awaited, but the outcome still provoked strong emotions through Los Angeles, a city indelibly marked by the first Simpson trial 13 years ago. This latest verdict was seen by many as a sad epilogue: Either Simpson is getting what he deserves or can't figure out how to stay out of trouble - or...

By returning fire and wounding his assailant in the leg, Detective Troy Lamont Chesley Sr. "marked" Brandon Grimes as his killer, prosecutor Kevin Wiggins told a Baltimore jury yesterday during closing arguments in the first-degree murder trial. "Troy Chesley shot the person who tried to kill him," Wiggins said. The prosecutor walked to the witness box, sat down in it and, taking on Chesley's persona, spoke into the microphone: "Brandon Grimes murdered me." On the final day of the two-week trial, Grimes took the witness stand in his defense, saying that he had been at his girlfriend's house on the night of the shooting, went to meet a friend, Kelly Carter, in a patch of woods nearby, and then suddenly "shots rang out."

Defense attorney Leslie Stein gripped both sides of the witness stand on Thursday as he forcefully rebutted allegations that he had tried to coerce a witness in a murder trial to change his testimony. "Of course not!" he exclaimed when Assistant State's Attorney Kevin Wiggins asked Stein whether he'd called witness Christopher Meadows a snitch and threatened him and his family. "Did you tell the witness to lie?" Wiggins asked Stein. Stein threw his hands in the air. "For this case? Why?"

The former inmate at a Baltimore halfway house accused of shooting another man told police that it was relatively easy to leave the facility at night, according to a tape recording played in court yesterday. In Baltimore Circuit Court, prosecutors played the audio recording from May in which Nolan L. Evans insisted to detectives that he never shot Larry Parks. Parks died from his injuries in November 2006. But Evans - son of death row inmate Vernon Lee Evans Jr. - also acknowledged on the tape that he had been able to stay out of the halfway house on East Monument Street at night, and told the homicide detectives that it would be possible for an inmate to spend an entire weekend away from the partially secure facility.

Howard County prosecutors began presenting evidence yesterday in the murder trial of Monti Mantrice Fleming, and three witnesses testified in the Ellicott City courtroom that they saw Fleming shoot at Shawn Edward Powell several times the night Powell was found fatally shot in August 2006. Fleming, 16, of Columbia, is charged as an adult in the killing of Powell, 18, of Columbia. Fleming is charged with first- and second-degree murder, first- and second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and handgun violations.