Sentence

A dutiful son earning minimum wage, Carlos Santay-Carrillo always made sure he mailed some money home to Guatemala for his disabled father, his mother and his three younger siblings. For Mother's Day last year, he managed to send $100 and promised to get in touch by phone, a potentially crucial call because, at any moment, he was about to become a father for the first time. "I was there waiting for the call," said the mother, Maria Consuelo Carrillo de Santay. What she did not know, and would learn later to her horror, was that her 19-year-old son had been stabbed to death in a Catonsville gas station, minutes before he was to take his wife to a hospital to deliver their baby.

Mystified about why a former Internal Revenue Service agent would blatantly skim money from the Baltimore County strip club he once owned, a federal judge in Baltimore sentenced the 60-year-old Florida man to 1 1/2 years in prison yesterday. The defendant, Ronald C. Heidel, had pleaded guilty earlier to making false statements on his and his wife's joint 2001 tax return. He declined to speak at his sentencing in U.S. District Court yesterday, which left the sentencing judge, Andre M. Davis, at a loss to understand the motive and the nature of the crime.

Former Randallstown football star and Maryland recruit Melvin Alaeze was sentenced to eight years in prison for his role in a shooting and robbery last December in Randallstown. Alaeze, 20, received the sentence Wednesday in Baltimore County Circuit Court after entering a guilty plea to first-degree assault in May. Under Maryland law, Alaeze must serve at least half of his sentence before he can be released. "Melvin still had opportunities to attend college," said Alaeze's attorney, Kevin Kamenetz.

A Woodstock man pleaded guilty yesterday in Baltimore Circuit Court to participating in a scheme to fraudulently bill Medicaid for more than $4 million in services that were never performed, according to the Maryland attorney general's office. Guy Anthony Bell, 44, of the 2700 block Tallow Tree Road was the chief financial officer from October 2002 until April 2004 for the Bridges Project, which provides psychiatric rehabilitation and therapy for children and adults in Baltimore, according to prosecutors.

Sentencing system defrauds the public Does anyone understand why Arthur Bremer, who was convicted of attempting to assassinate a presidential candidate, is being released from prison this year after being sentenced to 53 years in prison in 1972 ("Wallace shooter to be freed," Aug. 24)? He is not being released because he has been a model prisoner. He is not being released because a parole board determined that he has earned the right to live outside the prison walls. He is not being released because of his work tutoring other prisoners.

He sat there, at the defense table, a broken man. Despite an education capped with an MBA, a wife and young child and a close extended family, Patrick McDevitt, now dressed in a prison jumpsuit, admitted he could not stop using other people's money. A federal judge ended that spending spree yesterday with a 2 1/2 -year prison sentence for the Timonium man. McDevitt, who tearfully apologized to his friends and family in U.S. District Court in Baltimore yesterday, filed $399,537 in false claims to his employer for reimbursement of fake business expenses, court records show.

DNA links city man, 39, to 1984 rape, 1987 killing A man has been linked by DNA evidence to a 1984 rape and a 1987 killing in Baltimore County, police said yesterday. Joseph McInnis Jr., 39, of the 3500 block of Elmley Ave. in Northeast Baltimore has been charged with first-degree rape in the 1984 incident and first-degree murder in the 1987 killing, county police said yesterday. On Aug. 29, the state police forensic lab told county police that DNA retrieved from the two crime scenes matched each other, suggesting that one person was linked to both crimes.

There was a time when it seemed that John Walker Lindh was the lucky one. He actually had a chance to defend himself, in an American court, against terrorism charges (which were dropped). He wasn't locked up in Guantanamo or held incommunicado in a Navy brig. He wasn't tortured. He pleaded guilty in open court to lesser charges stemming from his service in the Afghan army - that is, the army of a government controlled by the Taliban - and was sentenced in October 2002 to 20 years in a federal prison.

Man sentenced in friend's strangling A recovering alcoholic who strangled a friend he met in treatment, then stayed for two days at her Maryland City home alongside her body was sentenced yesterday to 18 months in prison in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court. Circuit Judge Paul Harris said that according to trial testimony, the killing was the result of a heated dispute that became "violent and out of control" on June 4 between Christopher Perkins O'Brien, 34, and archaeologist Katherine White, 32. White had befriended O'Brien while they were in rehabilitation for alcohol abuse and offered to let him stay with her upon his release.

Former UMBC student John C. Gaumer was spared the death penalty yesterday when a jury sentenced him to instead spend the rest of his life in prison for raping and beating to death a woman he met online. The Baltimore County jury deliberated for less than four hours before reaching its decision, which was read just before 4 p.m. in a courtroom so full that attorneys, courthouse staff and other spectators stood several rows deep along the back wall and in part of the aisle. Because the sentencing form that the jurors had to fill out was 10 pages long, several tense minutes passed before the panel's actual sentence - life in prison without the possibility of parole - was announced.

A 24-year-old Baltimore man was sentenced to 15 years in prison Monday for biting off a portion of his former girlfriend's nose, a disturbingly intimate form of violence that prosecutors say is surprisingly prevalent in family violence cases. Charles Bowers pleaded guilty to first- and second-degree assault last month in the 2008 incident, which followed an argument over house keys. Judge Alfred Nance recommended that Bowers be allowed to serve his sentence at Patuxent Institution, a correctional mental health facility in Jessup, and that the young man, who said he grew up in an abusive home, be referred for psychiatric evaluation and treatment.

A teen accused of taking part in a double kidnapping, robbery and rape reacted with indignation Tuesday when he was sentenced to a 40-year prison term for his role in the crime. "This is nuts!" Brian T. Scott, 19, said to his lawyer shortly after Baltimore County Circuit Judge Robert N. Dugan handed down the sentence, under which Scott could be eligible for parole in 20 years. In an urgent whisper, Scott told the attorney, Jessica Bancroft, that he wanted a new trial. Scott and an accomplice, Kiheem Malik Taylor, 23, were each charged with 32 counts in the kidnapping and armed robbery of two teens at a light rail station in Timonium and the rape of one of them on Oct. 10, 2008.

An Annapolis man on Thursday received the maximum sentence, three years, for the killing of his girlfriend's puppy, which Anne Arundel County prosecutors said was part of a two-year pattern of domestic violence. The sentence was what prosecutors sought for what they called one of most gruesome attacks on a pet coupled with domestic abuse - a combination that experts say is common. Donte W. McCreary, 20, killed the 3-month-old terrier in front of his girlfriend because she cared more for it than for him, the prosecutor said.

NEW YORK -- Facing the prospect of at least 3 1/2 years behind bars, 2008 Super Bowl star Plaxico Burress on Thursday accepted a plea bargain with a two-year prison sentence for accidentally shooting himself in the thigh at a New York nightclub. The former New York Giants wide receiver pleaded guilty to one count of attempted criminal possession of a weapon, a lesser charge than he had faced. He will be sentenced Sept. 22 and is expected to begin serving his sentence immediately. Hours later, the NFL announced that Commissioner Roger Goodell had suspended Burress but that he will be reinstated upon completion of his sentence.

4 girls charged in assault on teen in Churchton Four teenage girls were arrested early Saturday, accused of attacking another girl at a party in Churchton, Anne Arundel County police said. Police were called to a large fight at a home in the 5400 block of Muddy Creek Road. When officers arrived, witnesses said the party was over and that the people involved in the fight had left. In the 4400 block of the same road, police responded after girls were yelling for help because someone was hurt.

A 52-year-old Howard County woman, whose mother was sentenced to six months in jail for abusing cats, must serve a day in jail for each of the 74 cats that died. Nese Icgoren, of the 7300 block of Swan Point Way in Columbia, told Howard County Circuit Judge Diane O. Leasure on Friday that she couldn't get her 81-year mother, Ayten Icgoren, to properly care for a small family of cats, then failed to do anything after the felines multiplied to well over 100. Neighbors had called authorities, complaining about an odor coming from the townhouse and bugs that infested their homes.

Man on probation for robbery is convicted of rape An Annapolis man was convicted Monday of second-degree rape and related charges in a June 2008 attack on a woman who had passed out at her birthday party. Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Pamela L. North convicted Michael Leon Jones, 21, of the 100 block of Obery Court after a trial without a jury held last month. He maintained the sex was consensual. But the accuser said she awoke to find him on her bed smoking a cigarette. Sentencing is scheduled for September.

The attorney for a former Baltimore police officer who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for taking nearly $380,000 from a Howard County bank in December 2007 has asked a three-judge panel in Circuit Court to have his prison term cut in half. Debra Saltz said that her client, Robert Flanagan of Dallastown, Pa., was "extremely desperate" and still suffering from the effects of the illness that forced him to leave a nine-year law enforcement career when he took the money from a Bank of America branch.

Columbia teen shot during fight at basketball court An 18-year-old Columbia man was shot Thursday night after a fight broke out on a basketball court, according to Howard County police. The man had been playing basketball with a group of people on Cradlerock Way in the Owen Brown village when a fight ensued, police said. The victim, identified as Keontae Johnson, was shot during the fight. He and his friends returned to his house on Overheart Lane and called 911 about 7:30 p.m. He was taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore with nonlife-threatening injuries, according to police.

Was the 150-year prison term given to Bernard Madoff an appropriate sentence? Yes 83% No 14% Not sure 3% (1,160 votes, results not scientific) Next poll: : New federal figures show a 4 percent drop in the number of vehicle miles driven over the last year. Are you driving less than you did a year ago? Vote at baltimoresun.com/vote