Top Stories
(2008-07-18)
BALTIMORE, MD
(wypr) -
The published comments appeared May 28th in Exhibit A Baltimore. They were in a story about Zach Sowers, who was beaten and robbed near his Patterson Park home in June 2007. He died of his injuries in March of this year, never regaining consciousness. In a plea bargain one of the defendants got 40 years, admitting to robbery and attempted murder. The three other defendants could be out in less than eight years. In the article, City State's Attorney spokesperson Margaret Burns defended the plea bargain: suggesting that the beating might not have been severe, that Sowers could have injured himself in a fall, or could have had a pre-existing condition.
Sower's widow Anna was outraged that Burns sought to minimize the crime.
TAPE: (18 SECONDS) IC: She said that Zach looked like a sleeping baby? OK, she wasn't even there! I don't know if she saw the photos, because those photos that I was shown by the prosecutors do not look like sleeping baby photos. And, you know she made it seem like Zach just sort of fell!
Sowers believes the comments were an attempt to discredit her after she publicly criticized the plea bargain. She had a meeting with Baltimore City State's Attorney Patricia Jessamy a couple months ago.
TAPE: (11 SECONDS)
IC: For these comments by Margaret Burns to be the first thing I hear, since that meeting with Jessamy, these lies, I mean that is a stab in the back by that office.
Burns wrote a letter to Sowers on June 16th, in which she claimed that the article contained (quote) major misrepresentations. The article's author, Melody Simmons, who also contributes to WYPR, said she stands 100-percent behind her reporting. The letter from Burns did nothing to quell Sowers' anger.
TAPE: (11 SECONDS)
IC: She never explains why she was misrepresented. I would think that, as somebody in the communications department, she would know how to handle like a crisis situation.
One reason for starting the campaign to oust Burns this week is the release of a July 7th letter to Burns from Doctor Marek Mirski, Chief of the Critical Care Unit at Johns Hopkins. He helped treat Zach Sowers, and detailed how bad the injuries were.
Quoting from the letter Dr. Mirski wrote: His condition was highly critical and near death from severe head lacerations and intracranial trauma. He was not, and could not in the remotest sense as reported by the media to look as he were sleeping like a baby.'He was in a deep coma...
A former Assistant States Attorney, Page Croyder, told WYPR news, that when a spokesperson from the City State's Attorney's Office minimizes the seriousness of the injuries, there could be legal implications.
TAPE: (27 SECONDS)
IC: What Burns was disavowing was the severity of the beating that might support a charge of attempted murder. And here, her office, Jessamy's offices, pursued and got a plea to that; and Burns after the fact is undermining what her own office did; almost even suggesting that they unethically prosecuted. If you say that the evidence does not support an attempted murder charge, what are you saying about what the prosecutors did in that case?
Ms. Croyder served as an Assistant State's Attorney for nearly 21 years until her retirement last year, when she was Chief of the Charging Division. Burns, as Ms. Croyder pointed out, is not an attorney.
There is no way to directly force Jessamy to fire Burns. The City State's Attorney is an independent, elected office.
So far, the only public official who has publicly come out in support of firing Burns is First District Councilman James Kraft. Sowers lives in his district. She's hoping to build public support and will be at the Downtown Baltimore Farmers Market Sunday morning. Her group is already working on plans for a Thursday rally at the Clarence Mitchell, Jr. Court House.
Margaret Burns was provided with an E-mail copy of this report prior to it being finalized. The Office of the State's Attorney declined to comment.
I'm Art Buist, reporting in Baltimore, for 88-1 WYPR.
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