Prison

One day last summer at the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup, a prisoner named Dennis Wise took a seat at the back of the tiny cubicle where I hold forth each week as a volunteer writing instructor. It's a loosely structured class and it isn't unusual that prisoners wander in for a session or two and then drift away. While always a possibility that such drifting is a commentary on the quality of the instruction, it is also true that writing is a painful business. The core of regulars who turn out every week come not because they want to, or because someone else wants them to, but because, in the true writer's motivation, they simply have to. Buried inside is something terrible, something wonderful, something that absolutely must come out. All their lives they have tried either to unlock long-imprisoned feelings or to escape them; that they have failed is as evident as their bleak existence in this ancient, decaying prison, far removed from the commerce of the normal world.

A Glen Burnie man who admitted to building bombs in his home was sentenced in federal court Thursday to nearly four years in prison. Todd Dwight Wheeler Jr., 28, wasn't the "next mad bomber," according to his attorney. Laura Robinson described Wheeler as a man with a troubled history, drug addiction and a fascination with explosives. Police and fire officials began investigating Wheeler after he was taken to Baltimore Washington Medical Center in Glen Burnie on New Year's Day with a burned hand.

John Merzbacher was sentenced to four life sentences for the horrific rape of a young girl ("Supreme Court decisions renew interest in petition fighting convicted child rapist's release," March 22). The recent Supreme Court ruling does not offer an automatic end to his sentence because of insufficient legal counsel about a plea agreement. State and local officials must consider the seriousness of his crimes and keep him in prison. Beyond the rapes of which he was found guilty, there are many untold stories about the vast extent of his abuse of young people.

A federal judge imposed a six-year sentence Friday on Jacob Theodore George IV, who sold heroin on the online drug bazaar Silk Road. George, 33, an Edgewood man with a history of arrests, drug abuse and mental health problems, apologized to the judge. He said he cried as he confessed to the federal agents who caught him. "I made a bad decision helping with Silk Road," George said, reading from prepared notes. George, who was taken into custody in early 2012, was one of the first dealers on the site to be arrested.

Two city drug dealers have been sentenced to prison in separate cases, including one who police said dealt cocaine in a small neighborhood in Northeast Baltimore called the 4X4, according to federal prosecutors. In that case, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office said that 30-year-old Tony Robinson, known by "Peterman" and "Pete," was part of a drug group from June 2009 through August 2010 in the area between Edison Highway and Belair Road. Prosecutors said that Robinson pleaded guilty in the case in which he sold 280 grams of cocaine and 5 kilograms of powder cocaine.

A federal judge in Baltimore has dismissed a lawsuit filed by eight state prison workers who claimed a strip search for drugs violated their constitutional rights. The plaintiffs' lawyer said he expects to appeal the opinion entered Thursday by U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz. The employees were searched after a drug-sniffing machine falsely signaled they were carrying drugs at the medium-security Maryland Correctional Training Center near Hagerstown in August 2008. The court found that there is no clearly established law regarding the level of suspicion raised by such alerts.

- Nearly 40 years have come and gone since Calvin Ash, a hospital kitchen worker, committed his one and only crime: At the age of 21, he shot to death his estranged wife's boyfriend. A Baltimore judge found him guilty and sentenced him to life in prison in 1972. Under the conditions of his sentence, Mr. Ash would one distant day be eligible for parole. Thirty-two years later, in 2004, the Maryland Parole Commission considered and approved Mr. Ash for release. But there was a catch: In Maryland, the governor can reject the commission's recommendations and, unfortunately for Mr. Ash, his case did not reach the governor's desk until after Martin O'Malley had been elected, in 2006.

Five state inmates committed to a prison in Baltimore were stabbed Monday afternoon and taken to area hospitals, prison officials said. None of the injuries were considered life threatening and no officers were injured, said prison system spokesman Rick Binetti. The injuries occurred after a fight broke out around 4:30 p.m. at a dorm in the Metropolitan Transition Center, a minimum security wing of the state facility on Fallsway. No other details were immediately available. annie.linskey@baltsun.com

It is of unending confusion — and frustration for victims — that people convicted of crimes and sentenced to prison rarely serve the sentences the judges dole out. Convicts are required by Maryland law to serve at least half their sentence for violent crimes and a quarter of their sentence for nonviolent crimes. Corrections officials say that most inmates locked up for violent offenses serve 70 percent to 80 percent of the sentences given by judges. In addition to parole and probation, inmates accumulate what are called "diminution credits" — in layman's terms, "good conduct" credits — that help them to freedom.

Two men and a woman have been convicted of being part of a violent drug gang that was run out of a Western Maryland prison. A federal jury convicted 23-year-old Tavon Mouzone and 24-year-old Anthony Fleming of racketeering conspiracy on Thursday. Their co-defendant, 25-year-old Michelle Hebron, pleaded guilty to the same charge on the second day of their trial. Among the acts Hebron admitted to was the 2007 shooting death of David Moore in Hagerstown. Prosecutors described Hebron as a high-ranking female member of the Tree Top Piru Bloods gang.

Three men who were sexually abused by a church youth-ministry leader years ago experienced a measure of justice Wednesday as they confronted their abuser in court, read emotion-charged statements about how his crimes have damaged their lives, and heard a judge sentence him to 16 years in prison. Jediah Tanguay, 33; Benjamin Tanguay, 31; and Roger Robbins, 30, were minors in the 1990s when Raymond Fernandez, then a longtime youth leader at Greater Grace World Outreach Church in East Baltimore, has admitted he molested them.

Let me see if I understand this: Marquel Gaffney, 15, murdered Albert Smith, 56, in 2007, was charged as an adult, but pleaded guilty of second-degree murder and was sentenced in juvenile court ( "Baltimore man, 21, charged in second murder in five years," Aug. 5). In 2012, he was convicted of drug crimes and last year he was charged with unauthorized removal of property. In March of this year he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years in prison with all but six months suspended.

As a foreigner in the United States, one question I've often been asked by newly-met friends has been "What do you find special about America?" I always have a good answer for that question: "Education. " American children have colorful lives while their Chinese peers are locked up in studies. Surprisingly, many of my American friends are not as optimistic about the American system. In fact, they've told me it's the U.S. education system that's problematic and perhaps should learn from the Chinese system.

A man who, with his fiance, stole $130,000 from a Dundalk bank where she had previously worked as a teller, was sentenced in federal court Friday, authorities said. U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett sentenced Darrius Roszario D. Washington, age 20, of Baltimore, to more than 10 years in prison followed by five years of supervised release. His accomplice, Janaya B. Person-Robinson, 20, pleaded guilty will be sentenced on October 22. She had worked at the branch, was familiar with the bank's operating procedures and knew the employees, authorities say. The couple waited in the M&T Bank branch bank's parking lot on October 1, as employees were arriving to work when Washington stopped a bank employee walking from her car, authorities said.

Back when Robert Ehrlich was governor of Maryland, I was interviewing men newly committed to state prison and suspected of gang affiliations. After years in denial, Maryland was just beginning to realize that gangs were very active behind the walls. Among them was a "new" incarnation of BGF (Black Guerrilla Family) that had taken its name from, but was not otherwise beholden to, the BGF that dated from the 1960s. I got to know Lt. Santiago Morales, an astute gang investigator at Baltimore City Detention Center, and we shared information.

Your editorial, "Breaking a vicious cycle" (July 14) hits the nail on the head. With U.S. youth incarceration rates the highest in the world - greater than the rates of the other 10 most developed countries combined - something is tragically wrong. It is disturbing that once incarcerated as a youth, even for less serious offenses, these individuals have an increased likelihood of returning to prison and a decreased chance of securing gainful employment later in life. As you point out, the Youth PROMISE Act offers a more effective approach to juvenile crime.

Anthony Mayes was nearing age 50 when he got the first suit he ever owned, a dark gray Armani, and it seemed life, at last, would be better. He'd just been released from his latest time behind bars, making it about 22 years of his life total, for an array of charges including drugs and armed robbery. He said he's determined to make his most recent six-month stint his last, and sees the clothes - suit, shirt, tie, dress shoes - as part of that effort. "They make me feel important, like I can succeed," said Mayes, 49, who believes he's been given "an opportunity to redeem myself.

John R. McLean, a Salisbury physician, was sentenced to eight years in federal prison Thursday, making him the second cardiologist in the country to face incarceration for implanting unnecessary coronary stents in dozens of patients, then fraudulently billing insurers thousands for the work. A Louisiana doctor was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2009 under similar allegations. And a half-dozen other physicians, including Towson's Dr. Mark G. Midei, are accused in civil lawsuits of overusing stents, though they have not been charged criminally.

I have been locked up at Guantanamo Bay for 12 years, held without charge or trial. I've done nothing wrong; in 2009, I was unanimously cleared for release by six different branches of the U.S. government, including the FBI and the CIA. Yet here I am, still detained. I write this 106 years after the birth of Thurgood Marshall, a Baltimore-born civil rights lawyer and later a Supreme Court justice who helped end segregation in America. Marshall understood and respected the humanity and innate equality of all people.

For far too many young people who get caught up in the criminal justice system, an arrest or conviction for even a minor, non-violent offense can become a one-way ticket to a shrunken future that slams the door on opportunities for the rest of their lives. Being arrested as a teen increases a person's chances of being arrested again as an adult, and teenagers sentenced to jail are more likely to be incarcerated later in life as well. Add to that the nation's harsh drug laws and stiff mandatory minimum sentencing policies and it's no wonder America locks up more of its citizens than any other country in the world.