Witness

THE ESCALATING use of intimidation to silence witnesses in Baltimore City criminal cases is a significant threat to public safety. Every day in courtrooms across Maryland and throughout our nation, threats against and intimidation of witnesses put justice in jeopardy. In the late 1980s, the proliferation of a new drug of choice, crack cocaine, coaxed by a steady heroin market on Baltimore's street corners combined with an arsenal of illegal guns, created a surge in loosely knit, violent drug-trafficking organizations that used guns to dispense street justice.

A judge delivered a major blow Monday to the state's case against two men accused of fatally slashing the throats of three children nine years ago, ruling that the testimony of a key witness is inadmissible. As prosecutors try for a third time next month to convict Policarpio Espinoza Perez, 31, and Adan Canela, 26, they'll have to do so without some important evidence and witnesses they used to secure a 2006 guilty verdict that was later thrown out by Maryland's top court. Circuit Judge M. Brooke Murdock told the prosecution that it may not use the statements of the woman who said in the earlier trials that she drove the men from work to the crime scene.

Anne Arundel County police have found a Brooklyn Park teenager who they believe was in the passenger seat of a stolen car April 14 as a man was shot and stuffed into the trunk. Sierra Monet Anderson, 18, of the 3000 block of Third St., was found Tuesday in Baltimore. She is safe and is not facing charges, Cpl. Mark Shawkey, a county police spokesman said yesterday. "We're just treating her as a witness," he said. Her boyfriend, Antonio Moore, 20, of the 3800 block of Third St., was arrested April 19 in another stolen car, police said.

Isiah Calloway's death was reported in a single sentence back in April, a 19-year-old man "found shot inside a vehicle. " To federal authorities, though, Calloway was a potential witness in a bank fraud conspiracy. That is, until prosecutors say, his own attorney divulged sensitive information to his alleged partner. On Tuesday, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office announced the indictment of the partner and another man in Calloway's death . At the center of the allegations is the attorney, who was not charged, and who told The Sun's Justin Fenton that he did nothing wrong.

The son of a man who is on trial in a child sex abuse case unexpectedly tossed his support from the defense to the prosecution yesterday by recanting his prepared testimony and confessing his involvement in the molestation of two Gamber children."

Police conducted surveillance of his relatives. They searched 44 houses for him in a single day. And they staked out his mother's apartment in Owings Mills on holidays, hopeful that the long-missing witness to the only school shooting in Baltimore County's history might try to sneak home on Mother's Day or Thanksgiving. And yet, for three years, Ronald P. Johnson Jr. was not found -- until he identified himself during a traffic stop in Baltimore in November. Johnson, now 24, pleaded guilty yesterday to one count of obstruction of justice for failing to show up to testify at the 2004 trial in the Randallstown High School shootings case.

Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis has been subpoenaed as a defense witness in the trial of former Bengals linebacker Nate Webster, according to the Associated Press. Webster faces seven counts related to sexual conduct with the teen-aged daughter of an assistant coach in Cincinnati. He allegedly threatened the girl using guns to keep her from telling anyone; he'd apparently met her by asking her to babysit his children. The case is expected to last into next week. Webster, like Lewis, attended Miami.

Barely 24 hours into the witness murder trial of three defendants accused of drug conspiracy and multiple killings, a federal prosecutor revealed that a woman scheduled to testify Thursday had been intimidated at her job by two men in the courtroom audience. Her daughter's car windows were also smashed, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kwame Manley told the judge. If true, it's a brazen example of one of law enforcement's most vexing issues: violent threats and actions toward witnesses. It's a frequent occurrence in state courts.

Hancock's Resolution served as the backdrop for the fourth annual Hancock's Resolution War of 1812 Re-enactment Weekend in Pasadena. Accord ing to the property's Web site, the 18th-century farm has some "of the few existing stone buildings of that period in Anne Arundel County."

The slaying of a key witness in the Tauris Johnson murder case has sparked fear and outrage in an East Baltimore neighborhood where many residents already are mistrustful of the criminal justice system.The witness, Latisha Regina Murphy, 34, was shot twice in the face at close range about 5:30 p.m. Saturday after leaving her Crystal Avenue home.Police say Ms. Murphy was a witness to Tauris' slaying on Nov. 4 and was expected to testify against Nathaniel Dawson, 24, of New York City, who is charged in the case.