Jury deliberates in Baltimore corrupt cop case
BALTIMORE — Jurors started deliberating Thursday in a case involving one of the worst U.S. police corruption scandals in recent memory after hearing nearly three weeks of testimony from drug dealers, a crooked bail bondsman and disgraced Baltimore detectives who detailed astonishing levels of police misconduct.
The two detectives on trial face robbery, extortion and racketeering charges that could land them in prison for life if convicted. The trial in a federal courthouse has been dominated by testimony of four ex-detectives who worked alongside the defendants in an elite unit known as the Gun Trace Task Force.
Those former detectives pleaded guilty to corruption charges about their time on the squad, which was once praised as a group of hardcharging officers chipping away at the tide of illegal guns on city streets. They testified on behalf of the government in the hopes of shaving years off their prison sentences.
The former law enforcers testified that the unit actually was made up of uniformed thugs who broke into homes, stole cash, resold looted narcotics and lied under oath to cover their tracks. Wearing lockup jumpsuits, the ex-detectives admitted to everything from armed home invasions to staging fictitious crime scenes and routinely defrauding their department.
Assistant U.S. attorney Leo Wise described the two detectives on trial as “hunters” who “preyed upon the weak and the vulnerable” when their rogue police unit wasn’t scouring the city trying to find largescale drug dealers to rob.
Defense attorney Jenifer Wicks delivered a fiery closing argument on behalf of Detective Marcus Taylor. She told jurors the government went to the “depths of the criminal underworld” to find a parade of “professional liars” as witnesses.
“It’s deplorable, and it’s nauseating,” Wicks said, asserting there was insufficient evidence to convict Taylor of anything.
Detective Daniel Hersl’s lead attorney, William Purpura, did not deny that his 48-year-old client took money — an act that “embarrassed” the city and the detective’s family — but that didn’t rise to charges of robbery or extortion.
The detectives on trial did not testify.
The out-of-control unit’s onetime supervisor, Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, also did not testify. Jenkins was portrayed as a wildly corrupt officer leading his unit on a tireless quest to shake down citizens and locate “monsters” — bigtime drug dealers with lots of loot to rob.
His subordinates testified he occasionally posed as a federal agent, encouraged his officers to keep BB guns to plant as weapons and kept duffel bags in his police car with grappling hooks, ski masks and even a machete to ramp up their illegal activities.
It’s not clear when the ex-detectives who pleaded guilty will be sentenced by a federal judge.