Snowden

Annapolis civil rights activist Carl O. Snowden resigned his post in the Maryland attorney general's office Friday, one month after his conviction on a marijuana possession charge and following an eight-month absence from the job. Snowden, 59, declined to discuss his resignation, which he called a retirement effective Jan. 8. He said in an email that he would announce his political plans Jan. 18 during a Martin Luther King Jr. awards banquet he...

The civil rights chief for the Maryland attorney general's office was accused this week of violating probation in a drunken-driving case. Carl O. Snowden is scheduled for arraignment or similar appearance Jan. 7 in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court in that case, according to court records. On probation for three years, he could be ordered jailed for up to 60 days if judge finds that he violated probation. The case has unusual twists. Snowden was initially given probation before judgment on a 2010 charge.

The civil rights director of the Maryland attorney general's office has lost an appeal of his drunken-driving case, with the state's second-highest court allowing the conviction and suspended sentence that replaced an illegal outcome to stand. Carl O. Snowden, a former Annapolis alderman, had contended before the Court of Special Appeals that an Anne Arundel County judge was wrong to take away the original probation before judgment he received on a 2010 charge of driving while impaired.

On paper, the plan for a car maintenance shop and a few stores on Snowden River Parkway in Columbia hardly seems worth fighting about. The business people opposing it, however, see it as an illegal first step toward drastic changes for the worse along some major roads, and a potential threat to businesses in Columbia's nine village centers.  "We just feel it was an illegal rezoning," says Christopher Alleva, president of the Howard County Independent...

UPDATE: Carl Snowden has been found guilty of a misdemeanor drug possession charge.  Police smelled marijuana 10 feet from the car in which the civil rights chief for the Maryland attorney general's office was sitting, then saw the marijuana cigar lying a foot from Carl O. Snowden in his car, a Baltimore prosecutor told jurors Monday. "We've all heard of contact highs," city prosecutor Deniece Robinson said in her closing arguments, contending that Snowden had been "enjoying" the illegal drug as much as his passenger was. City police approached the Honda Pilot last April in Druid Hill Park and charged both men. "He knew the marijuana was there.

Carl O. Snowden, the civil rights chief for the state attorney general, was found guilty Tuesday on a misdemeanor marijuana possession charge after being found in April in a car that police said reeked of the drug. Judge Michael W. Reed sentenced Snowden, 59, on the spot to a 60-day suspended prison term and a year's probation with drug and alcohol screening, and ordered him to repay court costs. He will have an opportunity after successfully completing the year's probation to overturn the conviction.

Carl O. Snowden, the civil rights chief at the Maryland Office of the Attorney General, will go before a Baltimore jury Friday afternoon on marijuana charges. Snowden, 59, was arrested in April, along with Anthony Hill, 29. Officers testified before the trial began that they approached Snowden's car when it was parked in Druid Hill Park, just off Reisterstown road. They said they found a brown cigar containing what they thought was marijuana as well as a plastic bag they believed they contained more in Hill's pocket.

A trial date for Carl O. Snowden, the former civil rights chief within the Maryland attorney general's office arrested on marijuana possession charges this spring, has been set for Aug. 6 in Baltimore district court. Snowden, who took a leave of absence from his job the day after his arrest, was sitting with another man - a convicted sex offender - in a 2010 Honda Pilot parked in Druid Hill on April 19, according to police charging documents. Officers driving an unmarked car pulled alongside and said they smelled a "strong odor" of marijuana and spotted a cigar they suspected contained the drug.

Public records show that employees of Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold improperly accessed databases to gather information on at least three people on an "enemies" list, the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland said Tuesday. One of the so-called enemies was Lewis Bracy, a recently retired National Security Agency police officer and community activist who has not previously been associated with Leopold's alleged dossiers, according to the ACLU, which obtained the records through a public information request to the state.

Now I understand what prompted Carl O. Snowden's three arrests for driving under the influence: emotional trauma ("City police detail marijuana arrest of Md. civil rights official Snowden," April 24). Yes, Maryland's esteemed and first director of the Office of Civil Rights in the Maryland State Attorney General's Office needs a drink to deal with the pain. Truly a sympathetic figure. I think the state would be well served in this era of austerity by eliminating Mr. Snowden's position following what we are assured to be his windfall payment from his lawsuit against Anne Arundel County.