Ragione

A 41-year-old Riva man was sentenced in Anne Arundel Circuit Court yesterday to seven years in prison for kidnapping and stalking his former girlfriend.Judge Raymond G. Thieme Jr. also ordered George Galloway Jr. of the 3100 block of Riva Road to serve five years' probation and to have no contact with the woman.Galloway pleaded guilty Feb. 16 to kidnapping and stalking.Frank Ragione, assistant state's attorney, said Galloway waited outside his former girlfriend's Annapolis apartment Aug. 3 and grabbed her, accused her of seeing other men and kicked and beat her when she arrived home about 11 a.m.Mr.

A one-time halfback for Annapolis High School was sentenced yesterday to 30 years in prison for stomping to death his cellmate at the Anne Arundel County Detention Center.Keith Lomax, 27, of the 1800 block of Copeland St. in Annapolis told Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Robert H. Heller Jr. that he was sorry for killing Russell Six, 28, of the 8300 block of Dock Road in Pasadena.Lomax blamed mental instability for his deadly outburst April 21, 1998, and his attorney, Julian B. Stevens, blamed a decadelong downward spiral caused by drugs.

The woman formerly in charge of inmate funds at the Anne Arundel County Detention Center will have to repay $35,000 to the county, slightly more than half of the $60,000 she was accused of embezzling from jail accounts.Wanda B. Conaway, 40, of Huntingtown in Calvert County, pleaded guilty to felony theft Friday in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court under an agreement that includes restitution. Judge Joseph P. Manck set sentencing for Feb. 23.Conaway was charged in August with embezzling $60,000 from the jail, a figure she disputed, in what became a politically charged probe.

A judge has issued a gag order in a case stemming from the slaying of an Annapolis man described as a former police informant.CircuitJudge Raymond G. Thieme Jr. cleared the courtroom Monday for a hearing on whether accused murderer Howard Eugene "Howdy" Stevens Jr.'s confession to Annapolis police should be thrown out. Thieme's order to conduct the hearing behind closed doors came in response to a joint motion from prosecutor Frank Ragione and defense attorney...

A Pasadena man admitted yesterday in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court that he let his sick mother's health deteriorate so badly that her bedsores were infested with maggots.In an unusual criminal prosecution of parental neglect, John W. Phelps, 43, pleaded guilty to one count of neglect of an elderly or vulnerable person between January and May. In exchange, prosecutors dropped two charges.Judge Clayton R. Greene will not set a sentencing date until after Phelps testifies against his brother, who is to be tried on identical charges.

Scoutmaster faces possible 15-year term in child-abuse case A former assistant scoutmaster faces the possibility of up to 15 years in prison when he is sentenced Oct. 9 for forcing a Boy Scout in his Linthicum troop to undress so he could inappropriately touch and spank him. Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Ronald A. Silkworth convicted Matthew B. Showalter, 25, of the 800 block of Brighton Place in Glen Burnie of one count of child abuse in a brief...

A teacher charged with having sex with a student at Glen Burnie Senior High School in 1976 is the victim of a witch hunt, his attorney told an Anne Arundel Circuit Court jury yesterday."

An Annapolis man's confession in the shooting death of a police informant will not be allowed at trial, a judge has ruled.Court records show that county Circuit Judge Raymond G. Thieme Jr. last week granted a motion to suppress a statement by defendant Howard Eugene "Howdy" Stevens Jr. to Annapolis police detective Kenneth Custer. The records do not include an explanation.Thieme has issued a gag order in the case and ordered portions ofthe court file sealed.Documents included in court files show Stevens, in an interview with police last March, said he was one of three men who armed themselves and, with a driver, went looking for 22-year-old Sylvester Wayne "Tink" Johnson.

In her second day on the witness stand, a woman who testified she helped David A. Dicus dump his wife's body said she kept knowledge of the death to herself for three years because "I was told that I would end up the same way if I ever told anyone."The witness, Catherine McNicholas, held to her story about the death of Terry Lee Keefer under lengthy cross-examination in Anne Arundel Circuit Court by Dicus' lawyer, Gill Cochran.McNicholas, despite three years of off-and-on questioning, told police her story only last fall, when authorities presented her with two choices: being charged as an accessory to murder or testifying under a grant of immunity.