Prosecutor

After reading the article "Scathing memo backs Dixon deal" (Feb. 3), I'm wondering if State Prosecutor Robert A. Rohrbaugh shouldn't submit his resignation as well as Mayor Sheila Dixon. Based on all the evidence that was disclosed during the mayor's trial, I'm at a loss as to why it was necessary to broker a deal with the mayor to keep her $83,000 annual city pension. The message this action sends to current and future elected officals is, "It's OK to steal; I'll still get paid!" Mr. Rohrbaigh's memo seems more of an effort to conceal his incompetence than to justify the "deal" he brokered.

An Odenton man who tricked a mentally disabled Glen Burnie postal worker into giving him more than $250,000 over the course of three years pleaded guilty Wednesday to exploiting a vulnerable adult, according to Anne Arundel County prosecutors. Eugene Allen Hinson, Jr., 59, of the 1300 block of Tab St. in Odenton was sentenced by Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Paul Hackner to serve 18 months of a 10-year prison term, prosecutors said in a news release. Hackner also required Hinson to pay full restitution to Thomas "Tommy" Newberger, 50, who is mentally retarded and has worked various jobs at the U.S. Post Office in Glen Burnie for about 30 years, prosecutors said.

If the city's most outspoken activists gave Gregg Bernstein a honeymoon period after being sworn in earlier this month as Baltimore's new top prosecutor, it appears to be over. Two groups of loosely affiliated community organizations and special interests protested on opposite sides of the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse on Monday, accusing Bernstein of being tight-lipped on a racially charged assault case and criticizing his "unholy" alliance with the Police Department. On the west side of the courthouse, protesters formed a picket line, calling the shooting of Officer William H. Torbit Jr. a murder and carrying signs with such incendiary slogans as "Arrogant Racist State's Attorney.

When a relative of accused druglord Robert G. Moore was stabbed and killed during a robbery, authorities say, Moore vowed to avenge the death. Over the next eight months, Moore and members of his East Baltimore drug syndicate picked off the man they suspected of killing the relative, former standout high school wrestler Darian Kess, and shot five more people, police and prosecutors say. On Friday, Baltimore State's Attorney Gregg L. Bernstein...

Isaiah Dixon, a 55-year-old former Baltimore County prosecutor, is set to go on trial Monday on charges that he stole a car at knifepoint from two women outside a store in January 2010. Dixon, who faces 18 counts, including armed carjacking, robbery, assault, unlawful taking of a motor vehicle and drug possession, worked as an assistant state's attorney for almost eight years, until July 1997. To avoid conflicts of interest, his case is being handled by a prosecutor from the Harford County state's attorney's office, Salvatore D. Fili, although it remains in Baltimore County Circuit Court under the supervision of Judge Timothy J. Martin.

When Thiru Vignarajah left the Maryland U.S. attorney's office to lead a new unit of the city prosecutors, there was the matter of putting together a new team of lawyers to pursue major crimes, bolstering relationships with police and other law enforcement agencies, and identifying the city's most violent criminals. There was also another matter: painting the office. To help create a sense of ownership over their work, he encouraged his new prosecutors to pick out their offices and paint the walls with the color of their choice.

A former Baltimore County prosecutor was convicted Friday of armed carjacking and robbery for stealing a car at knifepoint from two women outside a store in January last year, according to the State's Attorney's Office. Isaiah Dixon, 55, was ordered to the Baltimore County Detention Center and is scheduled to be sentenced June 1. Dixon had worked as an assistant state's attorney for nearly eight years, until July 1997, and was in private practice until he was disbarred in 2010 after a history of drug problems and his arrest in the carjacking.

Baltimore state's attorney candidate Gregg Bernstein and incumbent Patricia C. Jessamy met face to face in their first extended debate Thursday, frequently trading barbs. During WYPR's "Midday with Dan Rodricks," Jessamy called Bernstein a liar, while he called her ineffective and isolated. The candidates in the Democratic primary also tossed out various claims and statistics to support their candidacy. The Sun took a closer look at their claims and put them into context to see how they held up under scrutiny.

A lawyer who joined the U.S. Army Reserve says the Baltimore City State's Attorney's Office declined to rehire him after he finished his training - which he alleges is a violation of federal law. Capt. Andrew Gross, 28, of Columbia filed suit Monday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore against the city and the prosecutor's office, claiming the office discriminated against him because of his military service. The suit seeks unspecified damages, back pay and other costs. "It really blows my mind that they did this," said Baltimore-based attorney Steven D. Silverman, who represents Gross.

The man who nearly 30 years ago prosecuted Mark Farley Grant for murder in Baltimore says he never would have brought the case had he known then what he knows today - that a key state's witness had testified only after being threatened at gunpoint by relatives of the original suspect. Phillip G. Dantes, who served as an assistant city state's attorney in the 1980s, says that, in light of information he now has, he would have prosecuted the original suspect, Mark "Shane" White, who is now deceased, instead of Mr. Grant.

I'm writing in response to the decision of Baltimore prosecutors to reduce charges in the St. Patrick's beating ("Half of the charges are dropped in taped beating," May 10). I believe that the government should take this case more seriously. They have evidence due to this videotaping that four people beat and robbed a tourist. Is that not enough? Why are the charges being dropped? If you cannot walk down a Baltimore street without being attacked, obviously the government officials are not doing their jobs.

A 61-year-old white woman, who says she was wrongfully fired from the Baltimore prosecutors' office after 25 years on the job, has filed an employment discrimination lawsuit alleging age, race and gender discrimination in the 2010 termination. Antoinette E. Swiec, of Baltimore, is seeking $400,000 in compensation from the Baltimore state's attorney's office on each of two counts, claiming she was fired because the predominantly young, African American division she worked for wanted her out. The lawsuit was filed in  U.S. District Court Monday, and was to be served on Baltimore State's Attorney Gregg Bernstein, though the firing occurred under his predecessor, Patricia C. Jessamy.

One document proposed a deliberate plan to suppress black votes: "The first and most desired outcome is voter suppression. " Another depicted the campaign of former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. promising a bonus to consultant Julius Henson if he made "the city turnout stay low" on Election Day 2010.  A third document contained notes from a Henson employee that said: "Suppress turnout in black communities," next to the words: "Obama, O'Malley,...

Six weeks after Scott M. Greenberg was found shot to death in his parents' house in Owings Mills in August, 2009, police arrested Gerald E. Sears and charged him with murder, robbery and drug-dealing. Police never found the murder weapon, or the wallet, bank card and cell phone they claim Sears took from Greenberg. Nor did they find Sears' fingerprints or DNA in the house. What they did get were cell phone records, Sears' admission that he'd been in the house to sell crack cocaine, and no sign the house on Velvet Valley Way had been ransacked by a burglar.

Prosecutors want the jury deciding the fate of political consultant Julius Henson to focus on one piece of evidence: the robocall he orchestrated on Election Day 2010 that told Democrats in Baltimore and Prince George's County to "relax" and stay home. That call — which prosecutors say Republican former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s campaign used in an attempt to suppress black votes — is the "primary evidence in the case," said Maryland State Prosecutor Emmet C. Davitt during opening statements Tuesday.

Prosecutors alleged Friday that the 28-year-old man charged with murdering Phylicia Barnes asphyxiated the teenager in her sister's Northwest Baltimore apartment, and then moved her body using a 35-gallon plastic tub. Michael Maurice Johnson, the ex-boyfriend of Phylicia's older half-sister, was seen by a neighbor sweating and struggling to move a container from the apartment, Assistant State's Attorney Lisa Goldberg said at a hearing while arguing...

In her three decades as a prosecutor, S. Ann Brobst has gone after every kind of criminal - murderers, rapists, con artists, thieves - and, more often than not, she's thrown the book at them. Now, in her judicial robes, she's aiming for more magnanimity. "Most people are not evil," said Brobst, 56, who was sworn in Wednesday as a Baltimore County circuit judge. In many cases, she said, defendants charged with crimes "just messed up." Others, of course, were accused of unspeakable acts, and Brobst's job as the county's lead prosecutor of felonies was, as she puts it, "to do justice" for both victims and perpetrators.

Baltimore's top prosecutor and City Council president called Wednesday for an outside agency to investigate rape complaints summarily dismissed by police detectives, saying that independent eyes are needed to ensure citizens' faith in the results. Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy and one of her top deputies testified at a City Council hearing that any review by city police and prosecutors — as proposed by a task force selected by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake — would be akin to "evaluating our own work."

A former Glen Burnie High School English teacher faces the possibility of spending up to 10 years in prison after entered pleas Friday to charges that he had sexual encounters with female students, said a spokeswoman for Anne Arundel County prosecutors. Jeffrey Robert Sears Jr., 30, of Glen Burnie, was charged in December with having sexual activity over two years with three students who were ages 15 and 16 – including intercourse in his classroom, car and bedroom, with a sexual encounter with one girl in a school stairwell.

Baltimore prosecutors lost two tough cases this week - the animal cruelty trial of twin brothers charged with setting a pit bull on fire, and the trial of a man accused of killing two girls in a hit-and-run on Martin Luther King Boulevard.  Sun reporter Scott Dance covered both cases. First, today's verdict in the hit-and-run case , where prosecutors had secured a guilty plea from a co-defendant in exchange for her testimony against the alleged driver:  "Two jurors said after the trial they doubted who was driving - Dunn or his girlfriend, key witness Kendra Myles - when two teenage girls were struck and tossed more than 100 feet.