Maryland’s fast-growing Hispanic population is about to have its first male representative in judicial robes, as Governor O’Malley has chosen of defense lawyer Ricardo D. Zwaig for a Howard County District Court judgeship.

There are two female Hispanic judges and O’Malley named Audrey Creighton, a third, for a Montgomery County District Court judgeship along with Zwaig.

“I feel proud I’ve been selected,” said Zwaig, 57, the father of three. “It speaks very clearly to the community,” he said about his selection. “Governor O’Malley understands the need to be inclusive and broaden the face of the court.”

Zwaig, who practices with his younger brother Michael at offices in Baltimore’s Highlandtown neighborhood and Ellicott City, is a former state and federal public defender who has applied twice before to be a circuit judge. He withdrew his application in 2005 and was passed over in 2007. Now he is to replace the retired Judge Alice P. Clark as soon as he can wind up his private practice and schedule his swearing in. His practice is mostly criminal defense, personal injury, and immigration plus some civil work, he said.

He is eager to be a judge because “I’ve been committed to community service forever,” he said, adding that he likes dealing with people rather than doing administrative jobs. “My kids say to me, ‘Dad, you know everybody. You talk to everybody.’ I really enjoy talking to people.”.

Though Zwaig has previously applied for circuit Court positions, he is looking forward to District Court.

“District Court is pretty much the face of the judiciary” to the vast majority of people, he said, and although cases in traffic court may seem routine and repetitive, “every single person who comes to court on every single case believes that case is important,” and so does he. The judgeship pays $127,252.

Zwaig’s Baltimore office is on Eastern Ave. in the midst of the Hispanic community and he often defends Hispanics, sometimes pro bono. Perhaps his highest profile criminal case, which was not pro bono, was his defense of Lazara Arellano de Hogue, the woman convicted in 2007 of driving her pickup truck into a woman walking her three-year old grandson, Elijah Cozart, in a stroller across Goucher Boulevard in Dec. 2006. De Hogue drove away, dragging the little boy for a mile to his death before crashing. She got a 10-year prison term. It was a “terrible” case” Zwaig said this week.

A native of Argentina, he moved to the Baltimore area at age 10, he said, when his family came north to join European cousins who had survived the Holocaust in a concentration camp during World War II. He attended what was then Milford Mill High School in Baltimore County and then graduated from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in 1977. He graduated from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1982, passing the bar the following year.

Zwaig worked as a state public defender until 1990, and then became a federal public defender before taking an administrative federal court job he quickly began to dislike. In 2002 he returned to the courtroom in private practice with his brother.

Lawyer Jason Shapiro, who headed the Howard County judicial selection panel that forwarded four names to the Governor, said Zwaig “has fantastic experience and a wonderful demeanor and would make an outstanding judge.”

Mayda Colo’n Tsaknis, the 1993 founder and first president of the Maryland Hispanic Bar Association, said there were few Hispanic applicants for judgeships over the years, but believes it is important to have the courts begin to mirror society more accurately. “when I started [in 1977], there were no Hispanics in private practice,” she said. That has changed, with about 200 members of the association now, but the judiciary has moved much more slowly.

Judicial selection commissions that send nominations to the governor “were not ready” for years to recommend Hispanics, she said.

State planning figures show the Hispanic population grew faster than any other group in Maryland during each of the last five years through July, 2009, and they now make up about 7.7 percent of the state’s population — nearly doubling their numbers since 2000.

Colo’n Tsaknis said she has known Zwaig for more than two decades and feels he’ll make a great judge.

“I find him extremely, extremely competent, with a wonderful personality. He’s fair, He listens, and when you are in some kind of debate over issues, he’s able to keep his cool. What I like most is that I know Ricardo is going to treat all who come before him in the same manner,” she said.

Howard District judge Neil David Axel, one of four current Howard district judges and a veteran of more than 13 years in the job, said he’s known Zwaig for years as a defense attorney. He too is confident of Zwaig’s ability to bring his life experiences to the bench, but also to adapt to his new role.

He’s going to be a wonderful addition to this bench,” Axel said.

Watch (video courtsey of ABC News):

An uproar over a cell phone video that shows a Seattle police officer punching a 17-year-old girl after his attempt to cite her for jaywalking is just one of several recent incidents where low-quality video footage shot by members of the public has incriminated public officials.

The video, which you can watch here (warning: disturbing content), shows a young woman resisting Officer Ian P. Walsh, who was citing the woman and a friend Monday for jaywalking. Her friend attempts to intervene, inserting herself between the officer and her friend and grabbing the officer’s arm. That’s the moment when the officer punches her in the face.

OUCH!

Seattle community leaders are in an uproar, saying the use of force was excessive. Officials with the Seattle Police Department say they have “questions” about the officer’s tactics and are investigating the incident. But Seattle Police Officers Guild President Rich O’Neil says the officer’s use of force was appropriate. The Seattle department announced Wednesday that Walsh has been reassigned pending further inquiries.

The Walsh footage is the latest in a series of incidents catching public figures in questionable — and at times legally suspect — conduct. In one of the more formal such encounters this week, Democratic Rep. Bob Etheridge apologized after video surfaced of the North Carolina lawmaker reacting angrily to questions from two young men holding a camera. He hit the camera down, roughly grabbed one of the men by the arm and neck, and demanded again and again to know his questioner’s name.

ummmm....WELLL.....maybe I wasn't there.....ummm...uhhhh - COME ON!!

****AUDIO: Listen to the May 20 preliminary hearing NOW!!!*** caught red-handed! ouch!

Officer First Class Megan Mattingly, a member of the Frederick Police Department’s drug enforcement unit, has been reassigned to administrative duties while authorities investigate allegations she committed perjury during a May 20 preliminary hearing, Police Capt. Kevin Grubb said Wednesday.

Frederick Police Chief Kim Dine reassigned Mattingly, a five-year veteran, on May 25, Grubb said.

Mattingly will remain out of uniform handling administrative tasks pending the outcome of the investigation, the department’s general practice when allegations of wrongdoing are raised, Grubb said.

The officer’s annual pay of $50,245 and benefits remain unchanged, Grubb said.

On Thursday, Mattingly’s attorney, Patrick J. McAndrew, declined to discuss specifics of the matter.

“This case is not what it appears to be and is actually quite complex,” McAndrew said. “We are confident all of this will be sorted out through investigation.”

The Frederick Police Department has asked the Montgomery County Police Department to investigate what happened, Grubb said.

No criminal charges have been filed.

Mattingly’s problems surfaced three weeks ago during a hearing in Frederick County District Court to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to forward felony drug charges against Harold L. Coleman Jr., 41, of Sykesville to Circuit Court for trial.

On March 31, Mattingly arrested Coleman and charged him with two felony offenses of possession with intent to distribute drugs and two misdemeanor possession offenses.

In a statement of charges she typed up and signed under oath — and later testified to May 20 before District Judge W. Milnor Roberts — Mattingly said she saw Coleman drive up and park his car at 5:05 p.m. March 31 in the 300 block of Adam Road.

She testified she saw Coleman get out of his car, open the hood, remove a white bag from under the hood and walk into a residence.

“The problem Officer Mattingly had is that she wasn’t in the area to make those observations,” defense attorney Norman Usiak said Tuesday.

“What she testified to was derived from a call from a neighbor to the communications staff at the Frederick Police Department,” Usiak said.

In police recordings March 31 after the witness’s call is received, Mattingly says she’s been at the police department writing a warrant, but that she’ll respond to investigate the witness’s report, Usiak said.

While cross-examining Mattingly during the preliminary hearing May 20, Usiak pressed her on her testimony about what she had seen herself.

Several times, he reminded her she was under oath, drawing more than half a dozen objections from Assistant State’s Attorney Michael J. Moore.

Usiak specifically questioned her whereabouts when the call came in.

A 30-minute audiotape of the hearing reveals a number of exchanges between the defense lawyer and the officer.

“You were at the (police) station filling out a search warrant when the complaint was made?” Usiak said.

“Lee and Long (other officers) were in the area,” Mattingly replied.

“They inquired if you could get there directly?” Usiak said, reminding her they said they were involved with something else.

“I was writing my warrant,” she said.

“You didn’t observe my client operate the vehicle, did you?” Usiak asked.

“Cpl. Lee observed, and I wrote it in my report,” she replied.

“You didn’t observe these things, did you?”

“No,” she said.

“You put in your police report a lie,” Usiak said.

“Objection,” Moore said.

“Yes, because we write it (the police report) in the first person when we are the charging officer,” Mattingly said.

Usiak argued Mattingly’s dubious testimony against his client should not be given any credibility because she did not witness any of what she testified to herself.

“This officer has perjured herself … whether by naivet? or (inaudible) … she perjured herself,” Usiak said. “And she continued that perjury until it was drawn out of her.”

Roberts issued his ruling instantaneously.

“The felony charges … due to the issue of credibility, the charges are dismissed,” the judge said.

Prosecutors followed suit six days later, moving to drop the misdemeanor charges against Coleman as well, according to a letter from Moore to Cecelia Herring, a District Court clerk.

“The state declines to prosecute,” Moore wrote.

State’s Attorney Charlie Smith declined to comment on the situation involving Mattingly, an officer who has filed charges in at least 172 cases, according to court records.

“Due to the judge’s ruling that the testimony in (the Coleman case) was not credible, we had no other choice but to dismiss the entire case,” Smith said.

“I can tell you that we have procedures in place to deal with the sponsoring of witnesses, meaning whether or not we will continue to call that person as a credible witness, and whether perjury allegations should be pursued,” Smith said.

Any credible allegation of a state witness committing perjury is immediately referred to another state’s attorney’s office to avoid any conflict of interest, he said.

Fraternal Order of Police President Charlie Snyder said the FOP stands behind Mattingly.

“We need to let the investigation take its course, and we’ll get to the bottom of everything,” Snyder said.

Grubb said the allegations are difficult to fathom.

“I’ve not heard of anything of this nature in my 21 years here,” he said.

Grubb said the police department takes all allegations against it seriously.

“We will do whatever is necessary to have this investigated fully,” he said. “We hold our people accountable.”

Usiak said many police officers always testify truthfully, but not all.

“An officer lying under oath in court isn’t uncommon,” Usiak said. “It isn’t uncommon for a president to lie under oath. Police officers are humans, and they’re flawed just like everybody else. Too many of them think they are above the law.”

“Some may make a mistake or misstate something. But this was an outright lie.”

Once word got out about Roberts’ ruling, that he did not find the police officer’s testimony credible, Usiak said defense lawyers countywide were lining up to get recordings of the hearing.

“I think (the state has) been dumping cases ever since,” the defense attorney said.

Usiak said he was pleased the state’s attorney’s office agreed to look at Officer Mattingly’s cases, including a review of her testimony May 20.

“Normally, prosecutors coddle police,” he said.

Usiak praised Roberts for his display of fearlessness and ethics from the bench.

Time and again, when Moore objected to Usiak’s questions, “Judge Roberts demanded that the officer answer. Unfortunately, not every judge in Frederick County would do that.”

Coleman said he is grateful to Usiak for defending him with gusto, but he thinks there still is more justice to be done.

He wants to see Mattingly placed in the defendant’s chair.

“She was going to send me to my grave, and she knew she wasn’t there,” Coleman said.

“I’m not an angel, but don’t lie against me.”

CASE DISMISSED!

BY: Tresa Baldas

New York Law Journal

May 19, 2010

Winning over jurors is tough enough for criminal defendants. Being ugly may make it tougher.

That is the conclusion of a new Cornell University study that found unattractive defendants are 22 percent more likely to be convicted and are likely to receive sentences that average 22 months longer than their better-looking counterparts. The study, “When Emotionality Trumps Reason,” was based on responses from 169 Cornell psychology students.

No surprise, said Jack King, spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, noting that defense lawyers have long taken looks into account when trying cases.

“We usually want our clients in a suit, with their hair combed and trying to appear as clean-cut as possible,” Mr. King said. “It bears out what many of us knew in our gut, or just believed, because we think we know human nature.”

James Reams, president-elect of the National District Attorneys Association, conceded that looks “could have a little bit of impact” in weaker cases. But he said, “This study may say more about the kids at that college than anything else.”

If looks were truly important, Mr. Reams said, “we’d hire nothing but attractive prosecutors and send them up there.”

The study, scheduled to run in an upcoming issue of “Behavioral Sciences and the Law,” was conducted by Justin Gunnell, a Cornell Law School graduate and commercial litigator in New York, and Stephen Ceci, professor of developmental psychology at Cornell.

Based on personality tests, the Cornell students were broken down into two groups of hypothetical jurors: those who reason rationally based on facts, analysis and logic, and those who reason emotionally and may consider such legally irrelevant factors as a defendant’s appearance, race, gender and class. The two groups were then given a case study with a photograph of an actual defendant and his or her general profile. They read real jury instructions and listened to the cases’ closing arguments.

While the two groups convicted attractive defendants at similar rates and were less biased in the face of strong evidence or very serious offenses, the jurors’ reasoning style tended to lead them to divergent conclusions in cases where the evidence was ambiguous and the charged offense somewhat minor, said Mr. Gunnell.

In other words, when a weak case presented itself with an unattractive defendant, the emotional jurors were more likely to convict and to hand down harsher sentences.

Mr. Gunnell said he believes the study could help lawyers fine-tune jury selection techniques. Those with the evidence strongly on their side might want to identify rational jurors. But lawyers relying on the emotional tug of a case might try to screen out those same jurors, he said.

As far as prosecutors are concerned, the rational juror is probably the ideal one, said Mr. Reams. Besides, he added, “How do you define attractive?”

@|Tresa Baldas is a reporter for the National Law Journal, an ALM affiliate of the New York Law Journal. She can be contacted at tbaldas@alm.com.

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N.Y. man serving triple life sentence freed from downtown Baltimore facility

State prison officials said a 26-year-old New York man serving a triple life sentence for attempted murder was accidentally released from a downtown Baltimore prison Thursday.

Officials said Raymond Taylor, who was sentenced to life in prison on an attempted first-degree murder charge in 2005, was erroneously released at 2 p.m. from the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center. The Baltimore Sun reported at the time that Taylor tried to kill his ex-girlfriend and her two daughters at their Pentland Drive home in Northeast Baltimore.

Taylor pleaded guilty to shooting Tammie Johnson and her teenage daughters, Cierra Johnson and Shatera Brooks. Each was shot multiple times in the head and body with a .22-caliber handgun, prosecutors said.

Taylor was arrested in New York City days after the shooting, police said. The victims survived but have had multiple surgeries.

Anyone with information on Taylor’s whereabouts is asked to immediately call 911. The Internal Investigative Unit of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services is assisting law enforcement with the case and is conducting an investigation into the circumstances of Taylor’s release.

Correctional services spokesman Mark Vernarelli said it was unclear how Taylor was released.

“We’re working as hard as we can to find out,” he said.

Breaking news brought to you by Maryland’s Premier Law firm Shapiro & Mack. Focusing in all areas of Criminal Defense, Personal Injury, and Collections.  “Service, Service, Service”

PART I

PART II

those lying eyes!

By: Gene Weingarten – Washington Post

In my mind, it came down to a simple, unsettling question: Is it worse to let a drug dealer go free, or to reward the police for lying under oath?

As it turned out, my question became moot. At the end of criminal trials in D.C. Superior Court, but before deliberations, the judge discloses to the 14-person jury which two of them had been randomly selected to be alternates. I was one of the two, so I was dismissed. I never got to do what I had planned, which was to hold out for acquittal. I’d assumed my stubbornness would hang the jury, because I assumed the others would want to convict. Manifestly, the guy did it.

The case involved a routine “buy-bust” operation; according to the testimony, hundreds of these occur each month in Washington under almost identical circumstances. In this case, an undercover officer drove to a street corner in Northeast D.C. that is known for being an open-air narcotics market. He was approached on the street by a woman who was acting as an intermediary for the dealer. She took his order and his money, and then walked away from the car to meet the dealer out of sight of the buyer. It’s a system designed to stymie any police surveillance.

For that reason, in buy-bust operations, at least one other undercover officer is usually staked out elsewhere in the vicinity; in police jargon, he is the “eyes.” His job is to try to see what happens out of sight of the purchaser. Once the eyes has witnessed the transaction and can identify the seller, he radios his description of the suspect to the arrest team, which then moves in to do its job.

That’s how it worked in this case: The arrest team descended, located someone matching the radioed description and cuffed him. In the suspect’s pocket was a $10 bill with the same serial number as the bill the undercover buyer had given the intermediary. Open and shut.

At trial, the defense didn’t deny that the defendant had been caught with the incriminating money. The explanation they offered was feeble: Moments before the arrest, the defense contended, someone had asked the defendant to make change for a $10 bill. This mystery person was named but never produced or further identified. The defendant never testified, which was his right, but the only person who gave him an alibi — and his only real character witness — was his best friend, who arrived in court in police custody and testified, unconvincingly, in an orange prison jumpsuit and manacled in chains, hand to foot.

As I saw it, the defendant was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But there was a complication.

The “eyes” officer in this case — the only person who claimed to have seen the cash and drugs change hands — testified that he had radioed the following description of the suspect: black male, black jacket, royal blue baseball hat, v-necked white t-shirt, sneakers, key on a chain around his neck, carrying a bottle of ginger ale. He said his view had been unobstructed, on a clear day, from a distance of 50 to 60 feet.

Defense lawyer Jon W. Norris produced aerial photographs to prove that this was wrong. Between the place that the eyes said he was sitting and the place the police said the transaction occurred was a full-length basketball court — 80 feet — plus a lot more pavement. Norris sent an investigator to the scene to measure the total distance: It was, the investigator testified, 172 feet. The prosecutor never contested this. He couldn’t. The discrepancy was verified by satellite imagery.

So the eyes had seen a ginger ale bottle at 172 feet? Really? That’s some set of eyes the eyes had.

One morning, my wife and I went out into the street, measured off 172 feet and stood at either end. My eyesight is 20-20 with glasses. Her eyesight is 20-20 without glasses. From that distance, I could not see a trace of the key I had hung around her neck. She could not begin to distinguish the Sprite bottle I carried from any other greenish bottle-shaped thing. From that distance, you couldn’t tell a v-neck from a crew neck or, for that matter, a T-shirt from a polo shirt.

I concluded that the eyes had lied about the specificity of his radioed description — and that he wasn’t the only one. Two other police officers who had been at the scene testified that they’d heard exactly that description, word for word, detail for detail, down to the ginger ale bottle. They said they were certain.

How could this be? Defense lawyer Norris offered a theory: The officers had colluded in a fabrication. To better justify the arrest, he said, they had improved upon what had probably been a much sketchier original description. Once they had all seen the defendant up close, in handcuffs, and examined photos of him taken at the scene, all the little details became clear: the v-neck, the key, the ginger ale bottle. Retroactively, Norris suggested, they produced a perfect description.

Hadn’t the initial description been tape-recorded? No. The D.C. police testified that they do not do that. Sending a radio message out over a recorded channel, they said, would risk that the message could be intercepted by the bad guys on a police scanner and alert them to the sting. I found myself wondering: If the police wanted to, couldn’t they just put a cheap recording device in the eyes’ car? Just for the record?

But they don’t. Possibly they don’t want the record.

As a juror, I was skeptical. As a citizen, I was angry. For one thing, I was mad about the whole case — the bewildering amount of police time and taxpayer money spent on prosecuting one guy for selling $10 worth of narcotics. But as a juror, I felt it was not my business to object to that. I would have been willing to convict a defendant despite those misgivings.

The police testimony was another matter. As witnesses, the officers had been supremely self-assured, even cocky; clearly, they’d been through this hundreds of times. As they passed the jury before and after testimony, they greeted us winningly. One of them winked at us, almost imperceptibly. Their testimony was clear, concise, professional and, in my view, dishonest.

I believe they feel themselves to be warriors fighting the good fight against bad people who have the system stacked in their favor. I believe they knew they had the right guy and were willing to cheat a little to assure a conviction.

I believe they had the right guy, too. But the willingness to cheat, I think, is a poisonous corruption of a system designed to protect the innocent at the risk of occasionally letting the guilty walk free. It’s a good system, fundamental to freedom. I think a police officer willing to cheat is more dangerous than a two-bit drug peddler.

In his charge to the jury, the judge made it clear that if we found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt — which I had — it was our duty to convict. I was prepared to defy these instructions and acquit, in the interest of a greater good. There is actually a term for this:  “jury nullification.” I was going to nullify. But I was pretty sure that in my absence, the remaining 12 would convict.

The first sign that I was wrong came just minutes after I was dismissed. The other alternate told me that she, too, felt that the defendant was guilty but that the police had lied; in her mind, the lying created reasonable doubt. She, too, would have acquitted.

Back home, I waited for word of a verdict. It didn’t come. At the end of the day, after four hours of deliberations over a $10 drug bust, the deadlocked jury was sent home for the night. They came back the next day and tried again. More hours passed. In the end, they pronounced themselves hopelessly hung. A mistrial was declared.

I later spoke with one of the jurors, who told me they had been split, 10 for acquittal and two for a guilty verdict. Many of them had simply mistrusted the eyes. They didn’t believe he could have possibly seen the ginger ale bottle or the v-neck or the key, and they felt his apparent willingness to lie had tainted the prosecution’s whole case.

The prosecution seemed to get the message. On Friday, they said they would not refile the charges. The defendant is now free.

I’m proud of our jury system. I can’t say the same about our police.

Gene Weingarten is a staff writer for The Washington Post.

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