Plea Agreement

Mayor Sheila Dixon's plea deal - crafted in legal terms such as Probation Before Judgment and Alford plea - left many questions about her criminal record and her future. Here's a primer on the arrangement and the events it will trigger: Dixon will receive a Probation Before Judgment, or PBJ. What is that? Probation Before Judgment is a legal procedure that allows the court to dispose of minor cases against people whom prosecutors do not consider to be serious felons, says David Gray, assistant professor of law at the University of Maryland.

A Baltimore home builder pleaded guilty Thursday in connection with a construction investment scheme that defrauded victims of more than $14 million, the Maryland U.S. attorney's office said. Brian McCloskey, 44, spent at least two years — from 2009 to 2011 — targeting people with money to invest in construction projects or who needed financing for their own projects, including a hotel in Bowie. He told the investors to put "large sums of money" in an escrow bank account to prove liquidity for purposes of getting financing, and that they would receive a high rate of return for their efforts, according to his plea agreement.

In a surprise move, defense attorneys and prosecutors began discussing a plea agreement yesterday in the high-profile murder case of Anthony J. Zenone, a convicted bank robber charged with killing two men at Loch Raven Reservoir in 1995.Discussions began abruptly yesterday morning as Zenone, 32, sat in a cell in the Baltimore County Circuit Courthouse, awaiting a pretrial hearing about search and seizure warrants.His trial in the killing of Vernon Arthur Smith, 46, and Vincent Brian Young, 26, is scheduled to begin Monday with jury selection.

Federal prosecutors have announced that a second suspect has pleaded guilty to hanging a dead raccoon from a porch of a family from Africa who live in Middle River in order to frighten them. Authorities said Billy Ray Pratt, 24, of Halethorpe, faces up to 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced Aug. 17. A co-conspirator, Joshua Wall, 20, of Essex, is to be sentenced the same day and faces the same penalty. Both suspects pleaded guilty to conspiracy to deprive a citizen of their civil rights.

NEW YORK -New York financier Bernard L. Madoff might be nearing a deal to plead guilty to one of the most egregious financial crimes in history. Prosecutors who have charged him with operating an alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme notified a federal judge yesterday that Madoff had agreed to forgo a grand jury hearing, a step that is typically a precursor to a plea agreement. "He's going to say under oath, 'I did it,' and that's a huge step in the process," predicted Steven D. Feldman, a criminal defense attorney at Herrick Feinstein in New York.

A juvenile master threw out a plea agreement yesterday reached in the case against a 16-year-old accused of tossing a rock at a van and striking a Sun delivery woman on the head last August. The Columbia boy, whose name is being withheld because he is a juvenile, was given another court date this month. The juvenile master, Bernard A. Raum, said he refused to accept the deal because the teen's defense attorney and prosecutors appeared to disagree over the facts of the case. "I refuse the plea," Raum said as he ripped up the paper outlining the agreement.

ANNAPOLIS -- An Anne Arundel County police officer who had been suspended from the force for 30 days 11 years ago after a woman accused him of rape was convicted yesterday of misconduct in another rape case.Prosecutors dropped the more serious charge of second-degree rape of a 24-year-old Crofton woman as part of a plea agreement that required the officer, Michael Dennis Ziegler, 39, to resign from the force.Ziegler, who also was suspended in 1984 after failing to file a rape report he had taken from a Laurel woman, pleaded not guilty to the misconduct charge, but was convicted by Anne Arundel Circuit Judge Raymond G. Thieme Jr. based on a prosecutor's statement of facts.

Francisco Rodriguez -- convicted five years ago for the 1990 murder of state police Cpl. Theodore D. Wolf -- took the first step toward implementing a previously secret plea agreement that would suspend all but 15 years of his life sentence .His motion in Howard County Circuit Court yesterday for a sentence reconsideration, bitterly opposed by Wolf's widow, was delayed by Judge Raymond J. Kane Jr., giving the Howard County state's attorney's office two...

A 20-year-old woman accused of burning her daughter in a bathtub filled with scalding water and bleach in 1997 was arrested yesterday for allegedly failing to comply with a plea agreement that would have spared her a second trial on child-abuse charges.The trial of Mary V. Cabassa of Severn is scheduled for late next month.She was to be sentenced yesterday by Howard Circuit Judge Lenore R. Gelfman under a plea agreement reached with prosecutors.Cabassa had pleaded guilty in February to charges of child abuse and second-degree assault, and prosecutors were going to recommend that Cabassa spend 18 months in jail while attending parent classes and undergoing psychological counseling.

A cellmate whose testimony helped convict Harvey Allen Teets Jr. of murdering a school security guard has been given a suspended one-year sentence and three years of probation under a plea agreement with prosecutors.David Michael Lotridge, 24, of Baltimore, admitted breaking into his grandmother's house while in a drunken stupor in an attempt to find a place to spend the night.Lotridge was found not guilty in Baltimore County District Court in Essex of two counts of malicious destruction of property and burglary.

Document thief Barry Landau may have sold more of the national treasures he stole from museums — including the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore, where his scheme unraveled — than previously thought, according to the National Archives inspector general, who said Wednesday that his investigators have uncovered new evidence. Members of the agency's Archival Recovery Team are now targeting historic document dealers who illegally, if unknowingly, bought pieces from Landau for $500 to $6,000 apiece, based on the disgraced collector's own sales records, which were found during an FBI search of Landau's Manhattan apartment.

From The Sun's John Fritze: An Essex man pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges for hanging a dead raccoon on the porch of a black family in Middle River two years ago, according to a plea agreement released by the U.S. Department of Justice on Monday. Joshua Wall, 20, hanged the raccoon by a noose on the family's porch in April 2010 after a fight between a child who lived with Wall and the son of the victims' family, according to the agreement.

An Essex man pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges for hanging a dead raccoon on the porch of a black family in Middle River two years ago, according to a plea agreement released by the U.S. Department of Justice on Monday. Joshua Wall, 20, hanged the raccoon by a noose on the family's porch in April 2010 after a fight between a child who lived with Wall and the son of the victims' family, according to the agreement. Wall conspired with four unnamed people, but he was the only one charged in the incident.

A Baltimore County woman could be sentenced to up to 60 years in prison under a plea agreement for plotting the killing of her husband, a Dundalk bar owner, in 2010. At a hearing Friday in Baltimore County Circuit Court, Jaclyn J. Martin, 31, entered an "Alford plea" to a charge of first-degree murder. In such a plea, the defendant maintains innocence but acknowledges that prosecutors have enough evidence to obtain a conviction. Martin — one of four defendants in the case — was accused of asking her brother, Robert M. Garner, to kill her husband, Lee Martin, in May 2010.

Thomas Leroy Griffin, formerly of Hagerstown and Rosedale, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court on Monday to charges he sexually abused a child to produce child pornography. Griffin, 32, began committing the abuses against his victim when she was 5 or 6 years old, according to the plea agreement, engaging in sexually explicit conduct with the child in order to produce visual depictions on at least five occasions. The victim's mother discovered a videotape documenting the abuse last December.

Two Baltimore police officers assigned to the Northeast District pleaded guilty this week to sending car customers to a Rosedale auto repair shop in exchange for bribes from the owners, bringing the number of officers convicted in the federal case to 11. Leonel Rodriguez, 31, was convicted of conspiracy and extortion during a U.S. District Court hearing Thursday, the Maryland U.S. attorney's office announced, and Rodney Cintron, 32, pleaded guilty...

CHESTERTOWN - In an unexpected move that came soon after prosecutors rested their case against him yesterday, Richard Wayne Spick- nall II changed his plea to guilty in the shooting deaths of his two young children last year. Under a plea agreement, Spicknall, 28, is to be sentenced to life without parole, plus 20 years, on two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder. In exchange, Talbot County prosecutor Scott G. Patterson has agreed not to seek a death sentence.

Lavelva Merritt, who helped rob a Johns Hopkins researcher last year as her boyfriend murdered him, was sentenced to 30 years in prison Monday under a plea deal struck in May, though half the time was suspended, making her eligible for parole in roughly six years. The term is short compared with the life sentence her accomplice, John Wagner, received last month after an emotional trial in Baltimore Circuit Court, but it reflects her cooperation in the case, prosecutors said. "Without Ms. Merritt's testimony, I'm not sure whether we would have been successful" in convicting Wagner, Baltimore State's Attorney Gregg Bernstein said Monday.

Less than four months after a Maryland Historical Society employee uncovered a cultural property heist called "truly breathtaking" by national archivists, one of the men charged in the scheme has pleaded guilty. Jason James Savedoff, 24, admitted Thursday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore that he and co-defendant Barry H. Landau, 63, conspired to steal and sell valuable historic documents from museums in several states, including Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.