Parole

City police identified the man shot and killed by Baltimore County detectives Tuesday, as the union representing parole and probation agents expressed concern that the attempted arrest in the agency's parking lot put members of the public in danger. Christopher Shelton, 39, left an appointment with his probation agent and was fatally shot after pointing a .50-caliber handgun at two county officers who were investigating an armed robbery, police said. Shelton had served two terms in prison for armed robbery, most recently a 2000 conviction in Baltimore County that was apparently cut short by a three-judge panel, according to records.

Longtime Anne Arundel County State's Attorney Frank R. Weathersbee is retiring from the position he's held for 25 years to become a member of the state's Parole Commission. His appointment was announced Wednesday by Gov. Martin O'Malley. Weathersbee, 69, a prosecutor for four decades, said he will “retire” June 11, and start on the commission the next day amid “mixed emotions.” “I've got an opportunity to do something else and stay kind of in the field, so I am going to take it,” said Weathersbee, a Democrat.

In The Sun's editorial regarding parole ("Politics of parole," March 16), a very important fact is omitted. You stated that the judge would have given life without parole if he intended that the criminal never be released. However, the penalty of life without parole did not become law until 1987. Prior to then, the choice of penalties for murderers was life or capital punishment. Some of those fifty parolees that the governor is reviewing may be killers who should never be released.

A Lansdowne man was sentenced to life without parole in Baltimore County Circuit Court Monday for killing another man by striking him 24 times with a hatchet, according to the state's attorney's office. Larry Eugene Horton, 37 was found guilty in February of killing Ryan Wesley Jackson on Oct. 12, 2011. His sentence was handed down by Judge Jan Marshall Alexander Police said Horton killed Jackson inside his rented home on Rambo Court in Lansdowne before taking Jackson's body to the city.

I read with great interest Dan Rodricks' commentary of "Taking politics out of parole" (Jan. 29). In his 600-word essay, only once did Mr. Rodricks make a passing mention of the most important word in the criminal justice system — "victim. " Only once did the commentary use the word "punishment," which is one of the fundamental goals for imposing a criminal sentence and thus, making our communities safer. I view the need for the governor to sign off on the parole of a "lifer" not as putting politics in the parole system but as a way of making sure that the person who makes the weighty decision of when a lifer is released is a person directly accountable to the citizens of this state.

It is the ultimate user fee. On Jan. 1, the state started collecting a $25 monthly fee from individuals placed on court probation and $40 a month from newly paroled prison inmates. Those in a position to pay are indeed supporting the bureaucracy charged with policing their activities.It is only fitting that these fees be imposed. After all, parolees and probationers are the only ones who ever utilize the services of this state agency, which has a taxpayer-supported budget of $38 million. The new fees could eventually generate more than $3 million, offsetting a portion of the costs.

About 125 residents were evacuated from a 14-story senior living facility in Parole that caught fire Friday morning, an Anne Arundel County fire department spokesman said. Firefighters were called around 10:45 a.m. to the Claiborne Place Apartments at 130 Hearne Road, near Riva Road, where flames broke out in a 10 t h floor apartment, said Battalion Chief Steve Thompson. Two additional alarms were requested to help evacuate residents from the facility, Thompson said.

Calling the murder of Donna Jean Brown an act of "savagery," a Baltimore County Circuit judge on Tuesday imposed a sentence of life in prison without parole to the man who stabbed Brown more than 60 times on Thanksgiving Day two years ago. Rex N. Wesley, a 37-year-old Florida man with a long criminal record who had met Brown through the Internet and moved in with her in Cockeysville, was found guilty of first-degree murder after a three-day trial...

The Sun's Tricia Bishop reports: Dante Parrish, a convicted killer who was freed from prison 20 years early with the help of the Innocence Project, was sentenced to life without parole Tuesday for brutally murdering a 15-year-old Baltimore boy in 2009, less than a year after his premature release. The brutal killing of Jason Mattison Jr., whose troubled life as a gay teenager drove him from house to house, only to take refuge in the very place he'd be killed as his heroin-laden aunt passed out, left the judge with a loss of words.

A new District Court building may be the right medicine targeted in the wrong place to help an ailing Parole community.Members of a county-appointed advisory group, charged with revitalizing the Annapolis suburb, say a $15.7 million district courthouse proposed by state officials for a 55-acre property along Bestgate Road will only continue an urban sprawl that already blights the area.Instead, they say the courthouse ought to be built within Parole's "deteriorating core," located between Forest Drive and Jennifer Road.

When Christopher Cheswick learned that the drunken driver who killed his son Matthew might be paroled after little more than a year in prison, he turned to Facebook to post his outrage and heartbreak. Carl Braun had a different reaction: He launched an online petition to fight the early release of the man who took his friend's life. "I thought, 'This is not right,'" said Braun, 24. "The punishment does not fit the crime. Matthew's life was worth so much more than that. " Cheswick - friends called him "Cheese," for his camera-ready smile - was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver in Ocean City last May as he was crossing the Coastal Highway.

Having won approval in both chambers of Maryland's General Assembly, a landmark bill to abolish the state's death penalty awaits only Gov. Martin O'Malley's signature before becoming law. It is a tremendous political and moral victory for Mr. O'Malley, a long-time opponent of capital punishment who campaigned for a repeal during his first term only to come up short. That leaves only one major item of unfinished business on his agenda regarding the issue: Commuting the sentences of the five men currently on Maryland's death row to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Since the the death penalty has not been carried out in Maryland since 2005 and is not anticipated to be used again, the debate over whether it should be abolished is almost academic ("House committee approves death penalty repeal" Mar. 8). However there is at least one compelling reason to retain it. If an individual now pleads guilty in a plea bargain to murder to avoid the death penalty, winding up with accepting life in prison without parole, serves justice. However without the death penalty, when the prisoner would plead guilty, instead of agreeing to life without parole, he or she will demand a lesser sentence and even for the most heinous crimes will be eligible one day for release.

A man was shot in the arm Wednesday in what Baltimore police said appeared to be a brazen robbery attempt outside a city parole and probation office. Police said the shooting was unrelated to the Guilford Avenue Field Office and Region II Regional Office of the state Department of Corrections. It occurred across the street, in an alley just off the 2100 block of Guilford Avenue, Baltimore police spokesman Sgt. Eric Kowalczyk said. Sometime before 1:15 p.m., a suspect fired a gun, striking the victim, who ran onto the probation office property, police spokesman Detective Vernon Davis said.

After 11 years in office, Annapolis Alderwoman Classie Hoyle has decided to retire. There's just one thing she has left to do first. As she rolled around her district this week in her red Cadillac DeVille - with personal license plates reading "HOYLE" - the three-term Democrat recalled what inspired her to run for office in the first place and the legacy she would like to leave behind as she takes more time to care for her ailing husband. "Look at those sidewalks," said Hoyle, 76, as she turned on Forest Drive.

Here is a simple solution to the "problem" of juvenile offenders ("For many juvenile offenders, parole is out of reach," July 22): If you don't want to do the time, then don't do the crime! Paul Glascock, Ellicott City

Woodward & Lothrop hasn't yet mounted a cannon on the roof of its Parole Plaza store and pointed it toward the Annapolis Mall. But one gets the feeling that the retailer will fire away, if that's what it takes to bully the mall out of its expansion plans.Already the tiff between Woodies and mall-manager CenterMark Properties has escalated into a nasty battle. In recent weeks, Woodies has appealed permits and development plans, threatened lawsuits and blasted CenterMark in a full-page newspaper ad -- all in the name of protecting the environment and public trust.

Anne Arundel County prosecutors will seek life in prison without parole for Perry Roark, a reputed founder and leader of the violent prison gang Dead Man Inc., who was recently charged with first-degree murder in the 1994 death of another prisoner. Roark, 42, a muscular man with a long ponytail, was notified Thursday in Anne Arundel County Circuit court during a hearing to set his trial date, of the possibility that he will never be freed. A trial was scheduled to start March 26, 2012, and is expected to take two weeks.

At the height of the Civil War, a Union soldier climbed into the dome of the State House in Annapolis and described the scene around it, a sea of white tents spreading in every direction. The tents were home to thousands of soldiers captured by the Confederates and returned to the Union army. They would wait in Camp Parole until recalled to service or sent home. In a letter home, another infantryman described the dire conditions in the crowded camp and called the state capital "a low, dirty place.

A Baltimore man convicted of killing a dentist for money in Glen Burnie was sentenced Tuesday to two consecutive life terms in prison, one of them without parole, plus additional years. Dante Jeter, 25, already serving 60 years in prison for an unrelated murder in the city, stood silently as Anne Arundel County Circuit Court Judge Pamela L. North handed down the life sentences to be followed by 30 years. Jeter was convicted of first-degree murder, conspiracy and related counts in May in the Sept.