New Trial

The Baltimore police crime lab technician put on white latex gloves and carefully opened a yellow envelope, letting a box-cutter fall into his hand. Testifying at a murder trial Friday, he held up it up and paraded it in front of the jury. “You can see there's still some blood on the blade,” the technician, Franklin Saunders, said as he walked jurors through a gruesome crime scene, showing them evidence and photographs of a bloody room and a body of a teenager crumpled in the fetal position in his bedroom closet.

A new trial date has been set for Oct. 9 in an environmental group's lawsuit accusing an Eastern Shore farm couple and Perdue Farms of polluting a Chesapeake Bay tributary. The case brought by the Waterkeeper Alliance was originally scheduled to begin this week in U.S. District Court, but was postponed by Judge William M. Nickerson to encourage the sides to try to reach a settlement. Perdue spokeswoman Julie DeYoung said in an email Wednesday that despite talks, "it does not appear the case will settle.

A Baltimore teen convicted last month of shooting another in the arm and a 5-year-old girl in the head violated the conditions of his home detention about eight times, not the "more than a hundred" instances that defense and prosecution lawyers told the jury, a Baltimore Sun analysis shows. With the performance of the detention monitoring system key to his defense, the mistake could have severely hurt Lamont Davis' case and pushed the jury toward convicting him of attempted murder, legal experts said.

The third trial of two men accused of murdering three young relatives in a Baltimore apartment in 2004 was postponed for a second time Wednesday in the city's circuit court. A new trial date was not immediately set for defendants Policarpio Espinoza Perez, 30, and Adan Espinoza Canela, 25, though it will likely be sometime this summer, according to Judge Barry G. Williams. He attributed the delay to both sides in the case. The men, illegal immigrants from Mexico, have been in custody since their arrest nearly eight years ago. Their first trial ended in a hung jury, and the second resulted in convictions and life sentences that were overturned on appeal last year because of a trial judge's error.

Lawyers for Sheila Dixon said Friday that the Baltimore mayor deserves a new trial because some jurors sent Internet messages to each other and lied about their past, while poor decisions by the judge led to confusing deliberations. The arguments came in a detailed motion for a retrial that represents the final claim the defense can make before Dixon is sentenced Jan. 21. She was convicted last week of one misdemeanor count of embezzlement for using gift cards intended for the needy.

A 30-year-old Baltimore man convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced a decade ago to life in prison was granted a new trial Friday because potentially exculpatory evidence - a single-page police report - was not revealed during the original proceeding. Tyrone Jones was a college student home on summer break when he was charged with killing a 15-year-old boy in 1998. A jury acquitted him of the killing but found him guilty of conspiring to participate, based on a witness identification and the inexact science of analyzing gunshot residue, a particle of which was found on his hands.

Attorneys for convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad returned to court Tuesday for a third round of appeals, telling a federal appeals panel that Muhammad should not have been allowed to represent himself for two days at the start of his trial. The sniper slayings that terrified the Washington region in 2002 provided the backdrop for the argument before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. It focused on whether Muhammad deserves a new trial because his attorneys should have told the judge there was evidence he was mentally incompetent to represent himself.

Six years after pleading guilty in the torture death of a teenage girl, Satrina Roberts is asking for a new trial, claiming her attorney gave her bad advice and that her plea was involuntary. Roberts was sentenced to two consecutive 20-year prison terms in 2004 for murder and child abuse. A hearing on her petition for "post-conviction relief" was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, but it has since been postponed. Court papers say Roberts didn't understand the elements of her offenses, both because she had a clean criminal record and therefore "lacked familiarity with the terminology used in the courts" and because she "had a long history of mental health issues," along with an IQ of 56. Roberts was awarded legal guardianship of Ciara Jobes, who lived with her since 1998 because her own mother was dying of AIDS.

Two Baltimore men convicted of killing a father at his daughter's " Sweet 16" party four years ago will get a new trial after the state's highest court ruled that a judge misled potential jurors into believing that the suspects should be found guilty. The Maryland Court of Appeals ruling released Friday states that Baltimore Circuit Judge Charles G. Bernstein, during the process to select 12 jurors for the 2007 trial, asked how much credibility the potential jurors gave to television crime show dramas that highlight sometimes fictional, high-tech methods of gathering evidence.

Maryland's highest court on Thursday ruled in favor of an Orthodox Jewish plaintiff who missed part of a medical malpractice trial because it was scheduled during a two-day Jewish holiday. The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that the trial court "abused its discretion by denying plaintiff's motions to suspend trial for two days," according to the opinion released this week. Attorney Thomas J. Macke argued the Montgomery County Circuit Court judges became more concerned with efficiency, trampling client Alexander Neustadter's religious freedom.

The Baltimore police crime lab technician put on white latex gloves and carefully opened a yellow envelope, letting a box-cutter fall into his hand. Testifying at a murder trial Friday, he held up it up and paraded it in front of the jury. “You can see there's still some blood on the blade,” the technician, Franklin Saunders, said as he walked jurors through a gruesome crime scene, showing them evidence and photographs of a bloody room and a body of a teenager crumpled in the fetal position in his bedroom closet.

A Baltimore prosecutor offered jurors in a murder trial a painful and troubling portrait Wednesday of the victim's final moments, describing how a killer "suffocated and butchered" the boy, whose screams for help went unheard by a relative who she said had passed out from heroin. Assistant State's Attorney Jennifer Hastings held up two oversize pictures of 15-year-old Jason Mattison Jr., pointed to the suspect sitting just feet from the Circuit Court jury and said the victim "met with a nightmare, and that nightmare is Dante Parrish.

The state's second-highest court has rejected much of a $147 million jury verdict that was awarded to hundreds of northern Baltimore County residents whose groundwater was contaminated by a gasoline leak at an Exxon station. The Court of Special Appeals ruling could mean that some of the Jacksonville plaintiffs — who endured a five-month trial — will have to return to court. "It comes as a surprise to us, because we haven't been informed," said plaintiff Tresia Parks, reached by phone Thursday night.

The cleanup is supposed to be done in 2014, nearly eight years after 26,000 gallons of gasoline contaminated the groundwater in a northern Baltimore County neighborhood, but there's no end in sight for the legal wrangling. On Thursday, the state Court of Special Appeals rejected much of a $147 million jury verdict awarded in 2009 to about 90 homeowners who sued Exxon Mobil Corp., which owned the Jacksonville filling station where the gasoline seeped into the ground. The ruling has frustrated residents and diminished their hopes that they will ever be compensated for the property damage and emotional anguish suffered from having chemicals from unleaded gas flowing into their wells.

Maryland's constitution calls for the removal from office of any elected official, state or local, who is convicted of a felony or certain misdemeanors. That would seem simple enough, but we have, sadly, at least three examples from recent years in which Article XV didn't quite work out the way one might hope. Despite being found guilty by a jury or pleading guilty in court, former Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon, former Prince George's County Councilwoman Leslie Johnson and former Anne Arundel County Councilman Daryl Jones managed, at least for a time, to hold onto office while under the darkest of legal clouds.

The family of a special needs student who lost a $1.3 million lawsuit against the Baltimore city school system last month is seeking a new trial, saying the jury wasn't impartial and violated court instructions. Donna King, the attorney for Edmund and Shawna Sullivan, filed the motion Tuesday on behalf of the family who took the system to court after they say the complaints about the chronic bullying of their son — who suffers from a traumatic brain injury — and daughter were ignored by school administrators at Hazelwood and Glenmount elementary schools.

The state's highest court has returned a rape case to Howard County courts, telling judges there to determine whether police violated the rights of a teenager who was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman. In an unusual decision, the unanimous Court of Appeals ruling neither overturns nor upholds the 2008 rape conviction of Dedrick Tyrone Wilkerson, nor his 12-year prison sentence. Whether Wilkerson is entitled to a new trial will depend on whether a Howard County judge believes the second statement Wilkerson gave police in December 2007 violated his rights.

A Baltimore County Circuit Court judge on Tuesday granted a trial postponement to a man charged with leaving a device that police said appeared to be a bomb — a toilet equipped with electric gadgets — outside an administration building in February. Duane G. Davis, 51, whose trial was to have begun Tuesday, dismissed his lawyer and asked for the postponement so that he would have time to prepare for trial with another attorney or, failing that, to represent himself. A new trial was set for Sept.