Baltimore: Just About to Turn Its Life Around

So the fourth attempt at having this trial finally stuck and once again the ADA let me stay out of the courtroom and sit at home on standby. It was a nerve-racking few days waiting and wondering if I’d get the call to come in and say, “Yes, I made that 911 call…anonymously.” Fortunately, I never got the call to come in because the ADA said he wanted to keep the case “as tight as possible by having only eyewitnesses come in to testify.” After three days of jury deliberation, let’s take a look at how things worked out:

Charge No:1
CJIS Code: 2 0910
Description: ATT 1ST DEG. MURDER
Plea: NOT GUILTY
Verdict: NOT GUILTY

Charge No: 2
CJIS Code: 2 0920
Description: ATT 2ND DEG MURDER
Plea: NOT GUILTY
Verdict: NOT GUILTY

Charge No: 3
CJIS Code: 1 1420
Description: ASSAULT-FIRST DEGREE
Plea: NOT GUILTY
Verdict: NOT GUILTY

Charge No: 4
CJIS Code: 1 1415
Description: ASSAULT-SEC DEGREE
Plea: NOT GUILTY
Verdict: NOT GUILTY

Charge No: 5
CJIS Code: 1 5299
Description: HANDGUN: USE IN COMMITTING CRIME
Plea: NOT GUILTY
Verdict: NOT GUILTY

Charge No: 6
CJIS Code: 1 5212
Description: HANDGUN ON PERSON: CARRY/WEAR
Disposition: ACQUITTAL JUDGMENT GRANTED

Charge No: 7
CJIS Code: 1 1425
Description: RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT
Plea: NOT GUILTY
Verdict: NOT GUILTY

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This is what happens when people, like the victim in this case, stop snitching. Her story changed several times, even though she and everyone else knew who shot her, and this didn’t make a strong case for the prosecution. There were other witnesses, but it didn’t matter much since the main witness never told the same story. I can’t imagine being an ADA in a city like Baltimore. It must feel like being a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. The defendant in this case is a good boy, of course, who happens to be a drug dealer and a gang member. He was, of course, just about to turn his life around before he got locked up on these charges. It’s astonishing how people (family members/neighbors) turn a blind eye to all this shit. The thing of it is, so many of these same people benefit financially by harboring their crack-slinging grandsons in their homes. Don’t think for a minute that sweet old lady across the street has no idea what her sweet baby grandson is doing. And yet they wonder why violence seems to get worse every year and why some corners of some neighborhoods never improve.

Lady Friend and I have been getting lots of eye-fucking and cold stares from certain people in the neighborhood. People knew I was summoned and what it was for and I guess that makes me a snitch just for calling 911…anonymously. Since the verdict, we’ve had mouthy thugs park on our stoop and make themselves at home. We’re not sure if this is intentional or coincidence, but it’s best not to give people the benefit of the doubt in such situations. The last time we chased them off, which was Sunday, they give us an earful about how we can’t talk to them that way and how we can’t disrespect them. Umm…last time I checked this is my stoop, I own this house, and I’m not your grandmother. Whatever. Even Mr. Brown had to chime in on the “disrespectful confrontation”. He leaned out of his upstairs window and yelled, “I seen you yellin’ at them boys from up that-a-way. They ain’t no good. We all know what they up to. Don’t you worry. I got all yalls back and my black ass be hangin’ out the window with my gun ready to shoot them muthafuckas.”

The big lesson I learned from this whole experience is never call make an anonymous 911 call from your own phone. If you do make a 911 call from your own phone and you do get summoned as a witness for an attempted murder trial, like I did, tell the ADA you have no idea who made that call…that you can’t remember who was at your house that night…that anyone could have made that call, but it definitely wasn’t you. If you really want to keep yourself out of things, do like we’ve done and buy a GoPhone just for calling 911.

So the fresh-out-of-jail defendant was spotted this afternoon driving around the neighborhood in a gold Cadillac. He’s a good boy who, of course, is about to turn his life around and I’m sure he was on his way to pick up his grandmother from a church function. They say justice is blind, but don’t believe it. Justice is the sweet old lady who lives across the street from you who just pretends she can’t see anything.