Defense in newspaper shooting says prosecutors withheld info
Defense attorneys representing the man charged with murder in the slayings of five Capital Gazette staffers have accused prosecutors of withholding important information and asked the presiding judge to penalize them.
Prosecutors snapped back promptly against what they said were baseless accusations, explaining they already turned over the information on concerns raised about the Laurel man being “extremely dangerous” years before he was accused of fatally shooting Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Wendi Winters.
Circuit Judge Laura Ripken has not yet ruled on the motion seeking “sanctions” against the prosecutors filed by attorneys for Jarrod Ramos, 39, who faces five counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted murder, six counts of first-degree assault, among a host of other charges.
Ripken has complete discretion to determine whether there were, in fact, any violations and then to impose sanctions, John Robinson, a veteran defense attorney, told The Capital.
“(The) sanctions could be anything up to postponements, up to excluding evidence … excluding testimony related to evidence,” Robinson said.
The allegation of an evidence-sharing violation was prompted by information included in an expansive legal document filed by attorney Kathleen Kirchner, from whom the defense asked to subpoena records. Kirchner and her brother, attorney Brennan McCarthy, represented clients in various legal matters involving Ramos years ago in Prince George’s County. They represented the former high school classmate Ramos pleaded guilty to harassing in Anne Arundel County District Court in 2011.
Attached to Kirchner’s motion, which asked the court to throw out the subpoena filed against her, was a 2014 email correspondence with State’s Attorney Anne Colt Leitess, in which she “hoped to impress upon” authorities that Ramos was “extremely dangerous and that his stalking was a crime.”
Leitess was appointed as state’s attorney by a panel of judges in 2013 to replace the retired longtime head prosecutor Frank Weathersbee. A Democrat, she lost the position at the ballot box the following year to Republican Wes Adams. Leitess was returned to the top prosecutor’s position by voters in 2018, defeating Adams and going back to the office where she had worked for most of her career.
In her first email to Leitess, Kirchner described the Twitter rants Ramos posted during trial for a civil lawsuit he filed in Prince George’s County against McCarthy and the woman Ramos pleaded guilty to harassing. In the tweets, Ramos threatened judges and others.
“He makes statements about ‘bullets’, about ‘burning down’ houses. Anne, this guy is really, really dangerous,” Kirchner wrote in October 2014. “I am asking if you could please have someone in your office at least view the (Twitter) feed in its entirety and make a determination if a crime has been committed, and at the very least alert the Sheriff’s department … I am genuinely concerned about the safety of people who Ramos mentions.”
Leitess responded the next day: “Thanks Kathleen — I will turn this over to our investigators here in our office.”
The emails suggest Leitess and Kirchner interacted further. Leitess said in the legal filing Thursday she and Kirchner also talked on the phone and her office in 2014 responded to Kirchner’s concerns by telling the sheriff’s department’s courthouse security to be on alert if Ramos showed up to court in Anne Arundel County.