Sentencing Hearing

The sentencing hearing scheduled Friday for Joseph S. Ellis, the former Glenelg High School teacher convicted of sexually abusing a student, has been postponed. The court date has been rescheduled for April 25, according to the Howard County state's attorney's office. Ellis, 25, was convicted by a jury in January of sexual abuse of a minor, indecent exposure and telephone misuse. He also pleaded guilty in January to displaying obscene materials to a minor for sending inappropriate photos of himself to a 17-year-old former student.

Two city youths charged with fatally shooting a 13-year-old girl in the chest and then hiding her body under a pile of trash in an East Baltimore alley admitted to their respective roles in the killing Tuesday afternoon in juvenile court. A 13-year-old boy tendered an admission — the juvenile court equivalent of a guilty plea — to a charge of involuntary manslaughter for accidentally shooting Monae Turnage in March. A 12-year-old friend admitted to being an accessory to the crime for helping move her body.

When Jamaal K. Abeokuto knocked on his neighbor's door one afternoon in December 2002 after locking his keys in his girlfriend's apartment, the neighbor told him not to bother calling his girlfriend at work. Instead, Jimella Robinson testified yesterday at Abeokuto's capital sentencing hearing, she suggested he go across the street to Northwood Elementary School and retrieve the key that his girlfriend's 8-year-old daughter kept on a black shoestring around her neck. "He said he was in a hurry," Robinson testified.

A career criminal whom an irate customer beat with a baseball bat during a holdup of a Fells Point thrift store two years ago was sentenced Tuesday to 20 years in federal prison after a jury convicted him of robbery. Mark Lomax, 41, targeted Killer Trash on Broadway three times in eight days. Prosecutors said during his sentencing hearing that the suspect had committed an additional 14 robberies in the span of a month using a collapsible wooden yardstick covered in tape and wrapped in a plastic bag to resemble a firearm.

Edward Gentry would readily exchange his life for that of his slain daughter, he told a Howard County jury pondering the fate of her killer yesterday."

CUMBERLAND -- Lawyers for John A. Miller IV, an unemployed store clerk charged with murder in the strangulation last year of a 17-year-old Carroll County girl, asked a judge yesterday to limit the evidence that could be used to decide whether their client should be sentenced to death in a trial scheduled to begin next month.In a series of motions addressing the sentencing hearing that would take place if Miller is convicted, Assistant Public Defenders Jerri A. Peyton-Braden and Jerome M. Levine asked Allegany County Circuit Judge Gary G. Leasure to restrict the "victim impact statements" that could be presented by relatives of the slain girl, Shen D. Poehlman.

CUMBERLAND -- John A. Miller IV was described yesterday as a slick fielder on the softball field and a sharpshooter on the pool table, a good buddy to his friends and a loving father to his children -- and as a murderer whose life nonetheless should be spared. "He loves his children. You could see that in his face when he tells stories about them. He glows," said Lydia Becker, a former billiards-tournament partner of Miller's from Rochester, N.Y. Asked during the first day of a sentencing hearing how she would react if Miller, who was convicted last week of killing a Carroll County teen-ager, was sentenced to die, Becker said, "I would lose a part of my life, a good friend.

A social worker for Scotland E. Williams testified yesterday that the convicted killer fighting to avoid the death penalty suffered a troubled childhood -- beaten, emotionally abandoned and frequently left by his mother to care for his younger brother and sister.That version of Williams' family history came from S. Sandy Straub, social worker for the defense. She told Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Pamela L. North that Williams' mother disciplined her children routinely with a broomstick, extension cords or a flagpole.

Defense lawyers for Scotland E. Williams pleaded yesterday with an Anne Arundel County Circuit judge to sentence the convicted murderer to life in prison without parole, because too many questions about his crime remain unanswered to justify a death sentence.But prosecutors countered that the Arnold man is dangerous and conniving, and that there is no reason to think that anyone else robbed and fatally shot two high-powered Washington lawyers in 1994 in their weekend home outside Annapolis.

WICHITA, Kan. - Wichita residents know that for 30 years, Dennis Rader prowled their streets as the BTK killer, stalking victims he called "projects," hiding in their closets, and then binding, torturing and slowly killing them when they arrived home. They know he got his sexual kicks watching people die, including an 11-year-old girl he dangled from a pipe in her basement after murdering her parents and brother. They know this because Rader admitted it on June 26, when he pleaded guilty to 10 murders that had haunted the city since January 1974, when the girl, Josephine Otero, was found hanged in her house.

A 21-year-old fromAberdeen was sentenced in federal court Thursday to more than 12 years in prison for armed carjacking, prosecutors said. Tyrone Moore was sentenced to 147 months in prison followed by five years of supervised release for conspiracy, carjacking and using a firearm during a crime of violence, according to a statement by the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland. In November 2007, Moore and two others used a gun to force a victim standing outside his SUV to give them his car keys, the statement said.

A Carroll County woman was sentenced to five years in prison Thursday after pleading guilty to charges stemming from a fatal drunken-driving crash on U.S. 40 last year. Howard County Circuit Court Judge Diane Leasure sentenced Hampstead resident Alison Walsh, 23, to 10 years in prison with five years suspended, said T. Wayne Kirwan, spokesman for the Howard County state's attorney's office. Walsh will probably serve about a third of her sentence before she becomes eligible for parole, he said.

From the opening minutes of the sentencing hearing, it was clear that the judge was not well. John N. Prevas leaned so far back in his chair that he disappeared from view of the fixed camera, which picked up only two portraits hanging behind the bench. Only occasionally, when the judge lurched forward, did his crop of white hair and thick glasses jump into view. The judge apologized. He told lawyers at Monday's half-hour hearing that he would sit upright "as soon as my lungs clear, so for the time being, I've been positioning myself most comfortably.

Sheila Dixon sat silently in court Thursday during her final hours as mayor of Baltimore, receiving a scolding from a judge who said she was leaving office "in total disgrace" after stealing gift cards intended for needy families and would carry a "badge of dishonor" for the rest of her life. Circuit Judge Dennis M. Sweeney delivered the rebuke during a sentencing hearing at which he accepted a plea agreement calling for Dixon to step down as mayor and pay $45,000 to charity while keeping her pension.

Sheila Dixon sat silently in court during her final hours as mayor of Baltimore on Thursday, receiving a scolding from a judge who said she was leaving office "in total disgrace" after stealing gift cards intended for needy families and would carry a "badge of dishonor" for the rest of her life. Circuit Court Judge Dennis M. Sweeney delivered the rebuke during a sentencing hearing at which he accepted a plea agreement calling for Dixon to step down as mayor and pay $45,000 to charity while keeping her pension.

Convicted hit man James Dinkins fired a string of slurs at a federal prosecutor Tuesday morning, calling the man a "bootlicker" and warning him to "stay away" from the defense side. The outburst came shortly before the jury entered the federal courtroom for the sentencing phase of Dinkins' trial, which will determine whether he and co-defendant Melvin Gilbert live or die. Both East Baltimore men were found guilty last week of murdering three men, including two witnesses, and running a drug conspiracy.

Beverly Seward escaped from an abusive father, kicked a heroin habitand pursued a successful career in the medical field, according to testimony last week at her sentencing hearing.She's a survivor, not a victim of battered spouse syndrome, as she has claimed, accordingto a psychologist testifying for the prosecution last week at Seward's hearing.Dr. Lawrence J. Raifman said Seward has fashioned a story portraying herself as a battered spouse to explain why she fatally shot Archie White, her companion of 12 years.

A 24-year-old West Baltimore man -- who rode his bicycle alongside an acquaintance's car and killed him by firing two bullets into his head in what prosecutors called retaliation for a previous shooting -- was sentenced yesterday to life in prison.Baltimore Circuit Judge Gary I. Strausberg also sentenced Acheme N. Witherspoon to a concurrent term of 15 years for using a handgun in the commission of a violent crime for the the slaying of Dante Giles, in the early hours of a July morning two years ago."

The sentencing hearing scheduled Friday for Joseph S. Ellis, the former Glenelg High School teacher convicted of sexually abusing a student, has been postponed. The court date has been rescheduled for April 25, according to the Howard County state's attorney's office. Ellis, 25, was convicted by a jury in January of sexual abuse of a minor, indecent exposure and telephone misuse. He also pleaded guilty in January to displaying obscene materials to a minor for sending inappropriate photos of himself to a 17-year-old former student.

Baltimore County prosecutor Susan H. Hazlett says she had never before called anyone a predator in court. "But for this man, by his criminal history. ... I think that descriptor is appropriate," she told a judge yesterday at the sentencing hearing of Thomas J. Grant, a Salisbury man convicted of the rape and murder of an Essex woman in a long-cold case that was finally cracked through DNA evidence. "He preys upon those women in society who he feels he can violate." Baltimore County Circuit Judge Mickey J. Norman agreed.