Plea Agreement

A 65-year-old Linthicum man spread out a blanket and pillow in the back of his van and drove to a Baltimore County restaurant to meet what he thought was a nine-year-old girl, planning to perform sex acts with her, according to court filings. But the supposed child was in fact an undercover detective who had exchanged over 200 text messages with David Mitchell Rowe, posing as a girl he had previously molested at a hotel pool. He was arrested and charged with soliciting a minor to engage in sexual activity.

Linda Malat Tiburzi wanted a front-row seat inside a 4th Circuit Court of Appeals courtroom Tuesday, so judges could get a good look at her during a hearing involving a convicted child rapist who had taught at a Baltimore Catholic school. Though it's traumatic for Tiburzi to relive her alleged abuse at the hands of John J. Merzbacher, she said she and the 14 other men and women who took a bus from Pasadena wanted to show their commitment to keeping him behind bars. "I want the judges to see my face," said Tiburzi, 51, who said she was sexually abused by Merzbacher while she was a Catholic Community middle-schooler from 1973 to 1976.

One day after Del. Tiffany Alston was sentenced in a misconduct case, the Maryland General Assembly's lawyer says she is now suspended from the legislature without pay or benefits. State prosecutors said Alston's sentencing Tuesday automatically triggered her removal from office, but the first-term Prince George's Democrat and her attorneys disagreed. In a letter to House Speaker Michael E. Busch on Wednesday, the General Assembly's lawyer sought to clarify Alston's status. "At the moment that sentence was pronounced, the constitutional provision was triggered and Delegate Alston was suspended from her office," wrote Daniel A. Friedman, counsel to the General Assembly.

A co-founder of the Dead Man Incorporated prison gang pleaded guilty Wednesday to his role in the group's murder-for-hire and drug-dealing conspiracy — ensuring that the former Baltimorean serves a life sentence even as he promised followers in missives from behind bars that he would continue to defy the government. The plea agreement will spare James Sweeney, 35, a possible death sentence in a separate case in which he is charged with killing a fellow inmate. The former Locust Point resident, who is being held in federal prison in Texas, admitted under the agreement that he was a leader of Dead Man Inc. and that he ordered "hits for hire in order to raise money and also to enable white prisoners to retaliate against black gangs" in Maryland, court records show.

Baltimore police officer Daniel Redd was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court to 20 years in federal prison for dealing drugs, bringing a close to a years-long probe into corruption accusations against the Northwest District veteran. Redd's sentence came as part of a plea deal on charges that stemmed from wiretapped phone conversations of drug transactions between February and May of 2011. Prosecutors alleged that Redd and a Ghanaian man named Tamim Mamah, also known as Abdul Zakaria, headed a drug organization that imported drugs from West Africa.

The president and chief executive of Wings to Go, a fast food franchise headquartered in Severna Park, pleaded guilty to wire fraud Monday for embezzling $885,000 from the company to pay for telephone sex and prostitutes over a six-year period, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office announced. From 2006 through this year, Mark Chandler Goodnow, 55, claimed to have spent nearly $832,000 on business advertising, but the money really went to three phone sex operators in Texas to pay their fees and personal expenses, according to his plea agreement.

The former CEO of Severna Park-based Wings to Go pleaded guilty Monday to wire fraud for embezzling more than $885,000 from the franchise company to pay for prostitutes and phone sex, the U.S. attorney's office in Baltimore announced. Mark Chandler Goodnow, 55, of Pasadena, former president and CEO of the Buffalo wings franchise company, spent about $885,071 of the company's money to hire prostitutes in Maryland and to pay three women in Texas for phone sex and personal expenses, according to his plea agreement.

When Harford County's chief prosecutor, State's Attorney Joseph I. Cassilly, reached a plea agreement with a repeat-offending burglar that gave the 28-year-old admitted drug abuser 28 years to serve in prison, there was a lot to like about the deal. Asked about the plea agreement, Cassilly said: "If you're going to break into houses to steal stuff for your drug problem, we're going to ask for jail time. If you have a history of breaking into people's houses, we're going to ask for serious jail time.

A former 40-year veteran employee of the National Archives who admitted stealing historical treasures, including Herbert Morison's report of the 1937 Hindenburg crash and a Bob Hope performance, is to be sentenced today. Prosecutors said that among the items he stole was a 1937 recording of Babe Ruth's voice on a hunting trip. The prosecutors say in court document he sold the recording on the Internet site e-Bay for $34.74. The court appearance for Leslie Waffen is scheduled for 10 a.m. in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt.

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.