Van Bavel

A man who could receive the death penalty this month -- only the city's second capital case in the past nine years -- testified at a pretrial hearing yesterday that he attempted suicide the night he was arrested in the execution-style killing of a Baltimore police detective. "I was emotionally overloaded," said Jovan J. House, 22, who is scheduled to stand trial Jan. 27 for the killing of Thomas G. Newman. "I tried tying something around my neck." House testified that when he was left alone in a police interrogation room for several hours, he tied a strap around his neck.

During a 15-minute conversation in October with a Maryland State Police detective, Terrence Tolbert said, "I was there," but blamed a younger acquaintance for a fatal carjacking in the Annapolis Historic District a year ago, the detective testified yesterday. Tolbert, now 20, said he and a teen-ager he knew only as "B" - later identified as Leeander Jerome Blake - had been smoking PCP and were looking for a ride to Glen Burnie the evening of Sept. 19, said Cpl. Lloyd Edward White Jr. Tolbert and Blake are Annapolis residents.

A 21-year-old Kingsville man was sentenced to 20 years in prison last night for trying to plot the killing of a Baltimore County Circuit judge who was to sentence him for three armed robberies. Christopher A. Denicolis was sentenced to a 20-year term consecutive to the 20 years he is serving for the robberies. Denicolis told Judge Robert H. Heller Jr. yesterday that he never meant to harm Judge Dana M. Levitz. He said he offered to pay a fellow inmate at the Baltimore County Detention Center $10,000 for Levitz' death in an attempt to appear tough to other inmates.

Describing a quick and chilling homicide in Annapolis' Historic District, two police officers testified yesterday that murder-carjacking suspect Terrence Tolbert told them that Straughan Lee Griffin had no opportunity to react before he was shot point-blank and run over with his own Jeep in front of his home. "I said, `Did Mr. Griffin say anything?' and he said, `No, he didn't get a chance to say anything,'" Maryland State Police Cpl. Edward White Jr. told Anne Arundel County Circuit Court jurors yesterday, recounting that Tolbert called the Sept.

When Tonya Lucas' second arson and murder trial began yesterday in Baltimore Circuit Court, prosecutor Jack I. Lesser immediately got to the heart of the state's retooled case."

Troy White was portrayed in Baltimore County Circuit Court yesterday as playing a key role in the Feb. 7 jewelry store robbery and killing of Sgt. Bruce A. Prothero, as the jury heard testimony that he bought both getaway cars and cased the store by pretending to be a customer. White's lawyer acknowledged yesterday that his client participated in the robbery of J. Brown Jewelers. But he argued that White should be acquitted of the murder charge because he was unarmed and had fled by the time Prothero was shot.

When Tonya Lucas goes on trial today charged in the deaths of six of her children, Eugene Weddington will be waiting to take the stand as a key prosecution witness.Mr. Weddington is the unidentified witness who authorities have claimed will say that Ms. Lucas, a welfare recipient who was facing eviction, set her East Eager Street rowhouse on fire July 7 so the Red Cross would provide her family with clothing, furniture and new housing, individuals familiar with the case said.The Northeast Baltimore man's testimony is considered damning enough that prosecutors have hidden him away for the past month in the wake of alleged threats from Ms. Lucas' family.

The trial of Eric Tirado on charges that he murdered a Maryland State Police corporal could go to the jury for a decision as early as midday Thursday.Howard County Circuit Judge Raymond Kane Jr. told the jurors yesterday to get ready to deliberate and to bring a change of clothes with them Thursday in case they take longer than a day to decide.Tirado, 27, of the Bronx, N.Y., has been charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Cpl. Theodore D. Wolf on March 29, 1990. The state has charged that Tirado pulled the trigger after Wolf stopped him and another man, Francisco Rodriguez, also of the Bronx, as they were speeding in a stolen car on Interstate 95 in Jessup.

Anne Arundel County prosecutors will not seek the death penalty this spring for an Annapolis man accused in a high-profile shooting death in September of a businessman in the city's historic district. Prosecutors said yesterday that they will seek life without the possibility of parole for Terrence Tolbert, 20, the older of the two Robinwood public housing residents charged in the killing of Straughan Lee Griffin a short walk from the State House on Sept. 19. They recently filed a court notice seeking the same for Leeander Jerome Blake, 17, who is not eligible for the death penalty because he is a juvenile.

Prosecutors began Baltimore's first death penalty trial in six years by proclaiming yesterday that a 22-year-old West Baltimore man is a "cop killer" who executed a police detective during an ambush outside a city tavern. "Folks, this ain't a case of `whodunit,'" prosecutor Donald Giblin told the Circuit Court jury. "It's a case of who did what." Giblin, an assistant state's attorney for Baltimore, said in his opening statement that Jovan J. House told police in the hours after the slaying Nov. 23, 2002, of Detective Thomas G. Newman that he was involved in the killing.