Parole Hearing

A convicted murderer who remained free for five years due to a court error has been given some credit for his years of freedom.Judge Joseph F. Murphy Jr. rejected Lawrence William Carter's request for full credit yesterday in Baltimore County Circuit Court, but he said Carter, 42, should get an early parole hearing.Carter was convicted of second-degree murder and a handgun charge in June 1983. Sentenced that September to 20 years in prison, he appealed the conviction and was freed on a property bond supplied by his family, an unusual circumstance in a murder case.

A Baltimore County Circuit Court judge sentenced a 41-year-old man to life in prison Tuesday for the first-degree murder of a Rosedale woman whom he struck with a pickup truck. Jose Manuel Claros, who was convicted in October, did not admit to the crime at his sentencing. Instead, he blamed his victim and all but called her a liar. Gloria Elsy Torres-Restrepo, 39, died Jan. 5 after Claros struck her with her own pickup truck after she had expressed her intent to end their business and personal relationship, take back the truck from him and evict him from a house she owned in Rosedale.

Critics of the justice system often say that criminals have more rights than victims. Yesterday, the Maryland General Assembly tried to correct that perceived imbalance.By an overwhelming margin, the House of Delegates gave final legislative approval to a bill that, for the first time, would permit victims or relatives to speak at the parole hearings of assailants. Proponents hailed the bill's passage as a major step for victims' rights in the state.Sue Mathis, a crime victim from Baltimore County who proposed the bill, said it would allow victims to explain how crimes had affected them and express their fears about an assailant's release.

Charles Carroll, a convicted murderer who more recently faced charges of sexually assaulting students, will be released from prison this month despite having his parole revoked at a hearing yesterday. That is because Carroll, 31, had been trouble-free between his 2001 release on the murder conviction and his 2005 arrest on the assault charges, time for which he received credit from a parole commissioner yesterday. Carroll, 31, was a teacher at a private Christian school in East Baltimore until a 13-year-old accused him of raping her in a classroom.

CUMBERLAND, Md. - There were no greetings, no courtesies extended. Inside a cramped federal prison interview room near the Appalachian border between Maryland and West Virginia, three graying adversaries picked up this week where they left off 25 years ago, sparring over an infamous murder case that haunts them still. When the two-hour confrontation was over, Jeffrey MacDonald, 61, a former Army doctor who is serving three consecutive life terms for the 1970 killings of his wife and two daughters, was no closer to freedom.

WESTOVER -- Sheila Harding watched from behind a glass wall as the man who murdered her daughter with three blasts from a shotgun explained why he should be let out on parole after serving half of his 30-year sentence.It was not the first time Harding has watched James Oldenburg plead his case to the Maryland Parole Commission. But at this hearing, she got to do something that crime victims have only recently been allowed to do in Maryland.She got to have her say before Oldenburg and the commission.

A Maryland man whose death sentence in the murder of an elderly Woodlawn woman was overturned last year by the U.S. Supreme Court accepted yesterday an offer from prosecutors for a life prison term. The sentence makes Kevin E. Wiggins, 43, who has been in prison for 16 years, eligible for a parole hearing in as few as four months, a state prisons spokesman said. Baltimore County prosecutors quickly pointed out, however, that no inmate serving a life sentence has been paroled in the past decade and that the governor must approve the parole of any inmate sentenced to life in prison.

Brian Arthur Tate's carefully planned murder of a rival suitor was so brutal and left such deep emotional scars that granting him a release date from prison would irreparably damage the victim's family, a Circuit Court judge was told yesterday.Tate appeared before Judge Raymond G. Thieme Jr. at a hearing yesterday to ask for a release date. He was sentenced to life in prison Jan. 18 for the 1992 murder of Jerry Lee Haines.Tate, 18, of Cape St. Claire, has been admitted to Patuxent Institution and a specific release date would help in his therapy there, a defense psychologist told Judge Thieme.

The chairman of the Maryland Parole Commission told lawmakers yesterday that counties across the state have failed to hold parole hearings for eligible inmates and that better communication is necessary among local officials, the parole commission and the Maryland Division of Parole and Probation. During a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, commission Chairman David R. Blumberg also said counties need to standardize the parole process for inmates of local detention centers. "If we use the same procedure in every jurisdiction, then we won't have people falling through the cracks," he said.

Corrections officers at the state prison in Hagers-town use a large painting, 8-by-10 feet of inmate art, to divide the observation room when relatives of both the victim and the murderer attend a parole hearing.The painting is some prisoner's idea of heaven on earth - $H snow-capped mountains, waterfalls, an Alpine vista. The large canvas rests on wheels and a corrections officer pushes it into place just before the relatives of Fred Musser and Donald Brown arrive to watch the hearing.Brown's parole hearing takes place in a small chamber.

The chairman of the Maryland Parole Commission told lawmakers yesterday that counties across the state have failed to hold parole hearings for eligible inmates and that better communication is necessary among local officials, the parole commission and the Maryland Division of Parole and Probation. During a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, commission Chairman David R. Blumberg also said counties need to standardize the parole process for inmates of local detention centers. "If we use the same procedure in every jurisdiction, then we won't have people falling through the cracks," he said.

CUMBERLAND, Md. - There were no greetings, no courtesies extended. Inside a cramped federal prison interview room near the Appalachian border between Maryland and West Virginia, three graying adversaries picked up this week where they left off 25 years ago, sparring over an infamous murder case that haunts them still. When the two-hour confrontation was over, Jeffrey MacDonald, 61, a former Army doctor who is serving three consecutive life terms for the 1970 killings of his wife and two daughters, was no closer to freedom.

She was waiting on a March parole hearing for her chance to make the case that her former boyfriend -- the man convicted of trying to kill her four years ago in front of their two children -- should not be released from prison. She didn't know there was any other way for Kevin Derrick Adams to win an early release. But a friend called the former Janine Williams on Wednesday morning, telling her that she had read in the newspaper that Adams had been set free a day earlier. His lawyer had persuaded a Baltimore County Circuit Court judge that the 40-year-old Baltimore man had turned his life around in prison and shouldn't have to wait for his first parole hearing to be released.

A Maryland man whose death sentence in the murder of an elderly Woodlawn woman was overturned last year by the U.S. Supreme Court accepted yesterday an offer from prosecutors for a life prison term. The sentence makes Kevin E. Wiggins, 43, who has been in prison for 16 years, eligible for a parole hearing in as few as four months, a state prisons spokesman said. Baltimore County prosecutors quickly pointed out, however, that no inmate serving a life sentence has been paroled in the past decade and that the governor must approve the parole of any inmate sentenced to life in prison.

A 21-year-old Essex man was sentenced to life plus 15 years yesterday in Baltimore County Circuit Court for shooting to death a father of five last May as he tried to flee during a robbery. Curtis Love, of the 1000 block of Bayner Road, was sentenced at a hearing in which Love's lack of emotion was evident and the victim's mother broke down and cried. "I want you to know you have not only killed my son, you have hurt everyone I loved, everyone," Friedaricka Congdon told Love. Police said Allen Sampson, 34, of Baltimore was in the 1600 block of Rickenbacker Road in the Villages of Tall Trees on May 31, when Love and an accomplice demanded his cash at gunpoint.

Arthur Herman Bremer, who paralyzed former Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace and then spurned his offers of forgiveness, has argued he should be freed from prison because shooting "segregationist dinosaurs" is not as serious as harming mainstream politicians.The comments came in an angry, disjointed letter that Bremer wrote to Maryland parole officials last year and that was obtained yesterday by The Sun. Wallace died Sunday at 79.Bremer has never publicly discussed his case. The three-page letter and a 33-page transcript of Bremer's 1996 parole hearing provide the new clues about his feelings toward the Southern populist who "stood in the schoolhouse door," as he once bragged, in a failed attempt to keep blacks out of the University of Alabama.

David Teddy Yoswick insists that if his attorney had told him his first shot at parole would come 15 years into his prison sentence rather than the 10 years he believed, he never would have pleaded guilty to almost killing a Baltimore businessman two years ago.But in a decision filed yesterday on Yoswick's August request for new trial, Carroll Circuit Judge Raymond E. Beck Sr. all but said, "Too bad."Yoswick of Overlea pleaded guilty in August 1992 to attempted first-degree murder and kidnapping in the abduction of Frank Allen Storch, who was left for dead beside a creek near Sykesville on Feb. 26, 1992.

ANNAPOLIS -- The Maryland Parole Commission has unanimously denied Terrence Johnson's latest appeal for freedom, meaning the 28-year-old killer of two Prince George's policemen is likely to spend the rest of this century behind bars.Johnson has already served 12 years of a 25-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter and illegal use of a handgun in the 1978 slaying of Officer Albert M. Claggett in a Hyattsville police station. Johnson also was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity in the killing of Officer James B. Swart during the same incident.

Twenty-seven people whose licenses had been suspended for driving while drunk or drugged were arrested after they drove to meetings scheduled with probation officers, Baltimore County police said yesterday.The two-day sting operation, which ended yesterday, was patterned after a similar one in Annapolis that was launched when counselors who monitor convicted drunken drivers noticed many of their clients driving to their appointments."Driving up for a parole hearing -- is that blatant or what?"

WESTOVER -- Sheila Harding watched from behind a glass wall as the man who murdered her daughter with three blasts from a shotgun explained why he should be let out on parole after serving half of his 30-year sentence.It was not the first time Harding has watched James Oldenburg plead his case to the Maryland Parole Commission. But at this hearing, she got to do something that crime victims have only recently been allowed to do in Maryland.She got to have her say before Oldenburg and the commission.