Rapper sues GTTF officer
Young Moose says he was harassed and wrongly arrested
The Baltimore rapper known as Young Moose has filed a lawsuit against convicted Gun Trace Task Force detective Daniel Hersl and others, saying he was targeted for harassment and wrongly arrested.
Kevron Evans, 27, has previously alleged that Hersl pursued him and his family in attempts to derail his music career. In one instance, lyrics and imagery from one of his videos was used in a statement of probable cause, and he was arrested just before he was to take the stage for a performance at the Royal Farms Arena.
The lawsuit, filed in Baltimore Circuit Court by attorneys Howard and Mandy Miliman, seeks at least $1.5 million in damages, claiming Evans lost lucrative opportunities in the music business and his reputation was negatively affected.
Hersl is serving 18 years in federal prison after being convicted by a jury in 2018 of racketeering offenses related to the Gun Trace Task Force corruption case. Hersl was accused of stealing money both as a member of the task force and before joining the group in 2016.
Evans had accused Hersl of wrongdoing before the officer’s arrest, though those claims were not among the incidents charged by federal prosecutors.
Hersl, meanwhile, continues to protest his innocence in court filings and in letters to the state Commission to Restore Trust in Policing.
Walter Timothy Sutton, an attorney representing Hersl in civil claims, said he had not seen Evans’ lawsuit but says Hersl maintains he was an ethical police officer.
“His position is that he’s fully innocent and hasn’t done anything wrong,” Sutton said Tuesday. “He was trying to take bad guys off the streets.”
But Evans’ criminal attorney at the time remembers his client being hounded. “Any time Hersl saw Young Moose, he hassled him,” said Richard C.B. Woods.
In the lawsuit, Evans’ lawyers say he was with a friend outside a bar at North and North Collington avenues on Oct. 20, 2012, when three other officers approached and searched him without probable cause.
Evans was placed in handcuffs and driven to another location, where Hersl was waiting and asked the officers if Evans had been searched, the suit alleges. The officers said yes, and Evans was searched again, according to the suit.
The suit alleges that Hersl opened the trunk of his vehicle, retrieved an unknown item, then searched Evans again and produced crack cocaine.
“Obviously, those narcotics had been planted by Defendant Hersl,” the lawsuit alleges.
Evans was charged with three felonies and had a bail set at $2 million. He accepted a plea deal on advice of his attorney at the time and received a suspended sentence and probation. That conviction was vacated by the
State’s Attorney’s Office last year, as part of a process win which hundreds of convictions involving the convicted officers were thrown out.
The suit claims Hersl and other officers continued to pursue Evans, attending his court hearings and applying for warrants alleging that he had violated his probation based on false allegations.
Evans and his family were all charged by Hersl in 2014, a case that a judge threw out after hearing the evidence in 2016.
The lawsuit was filed against Hersl, as well as members of one of his squads before joining the gun task force — John Burns, Howard Ilgenfritz and Jordan Moore.
Ilgenfritz, who has retired, did not return a call seeking comment. Burns and Moore remain employed; the police department declined to comment citing a policy regarding pending litigation.
The city has settled several claims against members of the Gun Trace Task Force, totaling more than $10 million.
With empathy having been declared the hallmark of the Joe Biden time in America — the new president asking us to heal, fix what’s broken and look to the future — I find it difficult, in the moment, to ask too many questions about the past.”So hope for a great sea-change on the far side of revenge,” goes a verse by Irish poet Seamus Heaney. “Believe that a further shore is reachable from here. Believe in miracles and cures and healing wells.”
Here, in a well-lighted but windowless room on the fifth floor of an old warehouse in southwest Baltimore, I find the new enterprise called Lifting Labels, a small sewing shop where robes and vestments are being stitched together for judges, ministers and members of the choir. I meet Lillie Brown, Jody Boyd, Anthony Holmes, Earl Gaskins and Jerita Knight, all middle aged or a little older, all with criminal records, all with years and decades spent in Maryland prisons, all trying to stitch together a new life.
I could ask them, and did ask them, why they went behind the walls, and I got my answers, briefly and quietly stated at their work stations. But I didn’t push for details this time. I kept hearing an inner voice, and it reminded me that people with dark or damaged pasts, who do their time and pay their dues, deserve to be judged by who they are today, not who they were 20 or 30 years ago. They deserve second chances.
It’s what we’d want for ourselves.
Of course, I don’t put a criminal offense on the same level as a personal failing. I don’t compare an act of impulsive violence to a bitter argument with a parent or sibling. Inflicting pain on others has no business in the same breath as the pain inflicted by mental illness, drug addiction or deep, exhausting depression. Let’s not equate the unfortunate things that happen in life — divorce, the loss of a job, the illness or sudden death of someone we love — with the terrible things people do to others and that carry the penalty of prison.
But the commonality is the second chance, the precious opportunity to rebuild a life after trauma, self-inflicted or not. Not everyone is earnest about making a new start. But, saint or sinner, most of us have at some point been desperate for a second chance and embraced it like a life ring.
So Lillie Brown, after 27 years in prison, works at a sewing machine now, stitching together a colorful gold-and-black stole for a minister to wear during a Sunday service. She is 61 years old.
Anthony Holmes is here, too. He worked in the sewing shop at the old Maryland Penitentiary back in the 1980s, when he first went to prison. He is 60 years old now. He’s been out for five months and now makes $15 an hour at Lifting Labels, founded by a longtime prison chaplain named Chester France
in the former wholesaler’s warehouse at 1100 Wicomico Street.
It was France’s idea to create sustainable jobs for ex-offenders — “returning citizens” is the term their advocates use now — because finding steady work is probably the greatest challenge the formerly incarcerated face after prison. Despite recent wokeness about the effects of incarceration on people and families, a lot of employers still won’t hire adults with criminal records, particularly if their offenses were violent. That the violence occurred 25 or 30 years ago doesn’t matter. Our society still insists that penalties continue well after we’ve exacted revenge and inmates have served their time.
France, who devoted 17 years to a prison chaplaincy, wanted to do something for ex-offenders. So, about four years ago, he came up with the Lifting Labels concept, recognizing a potential market for ceremonial garments — robes and jackets for preachers, gowns for choirs, gowns for graduates and regalia for professors. Having a social mission would make the enterprise all the more attractive to his target customers.
France found support, both funding and mentoring, from Innovation Works and Ignite Capital, Open Works and other donors. By last summer, he had notched $200,000 in investor commitments and, though still raising money, he managed to buy new sewing machines and hire five workers and a supervisor, Sandy Spence, to get the business rolling.
The staff ’s first robe went Thursday to a Maryland Court of Special Appeals judge, and they’re working on selling a second one to a judge of the same court.
The other day, the Rev. Kevin Slayton, pastor of Lanham United Methodist Church in Prince George’s County and former pastor of the New Waverly United Methodist Church in Baltimore, came by for a fitting, and he brought material with him. “Black velvet,” he said. “I saw a robe in Philadelphia that I really wanted to get.” He opted to have Lifting Labels make it for him.
All of the employees came to the job with sewing experience from their time in prison, and that’s a relatively rare thing — a skill developed during incarceration put to productive use on the outside.
Good for Chester France and his supporters, developing a social enterprise like this, offering a second chance, a place for healing on the far side of revenge, on that further shore.
WASHINGTON — Can lawmakers bring home the bacon without it being pork?
It’s a question that’s vexing Republicans as they consider whether to join a Democratic push to revive earmarks, the much-maligned practice where lawmakers direct federal spending to a specific project or institution back home.
Earmarking was linked to corruption in the 2000s, leading to an outcry and their banishment in both the House and Senate. But many in Congress say the ban has gone too far, ceding the “power of the purse” to party leaders and the executive branch and giving lawmakers less incentive to work with members of the other party on major legislation.
Democratic appropriators in the House are proposing a revamped process allowing lawmakers to submit public requests for “community project funding” in federal spending bills. To guard against graft, the process includes safeguards to prevent conflicts of interest.
Whether earmarking becomes bipartisan could have enormous implications not only for the allocation of spending across the country, but for President Joe Biden, who is gearing up for a massive infrastructure push that he hopes will attract significant Republican support. With earmarking in place, bipartisanship could prove easier to achieve, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle could have reason to support bills they would otherwise oppose.
“This is a matter of allowing members to serve their own constituents,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla. “Somebody is going to be making
these decisions — and I don’t want to bash federal bureaucrats — but somebody who has never been to my district probably doesn’t know the needs as well as I do.”
With Congress having allocated nearly $6 trillion responding to the COVID19 pandemic, some conservatives are aghast at the prospect of Republicans participating in a Democratic spending spree.
“This is not the time to fall into the swamp, or into the dark hole of earmarks,” said Rep. Ted Budd, R-N.C. “We’ve got to draw a bright
line between Republicans and Democrats right now.”
For now, the debate over earmarks is taking place mostly behind the scenes, with House Republican leadership holding a listening session on the issue Monday night.
Worried about what’s ahead, Republican members in both chambers of Congress have sponsored legislation this year to prohibit earmarks. Eleven Republicans have added their name to a bill sponsored by Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and 10 Republicans
have signed onto a House version from Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C.
The end of earmarking came swiftly a decade ago, when House Republicans took the majority and quickly banned the practice. President Barack Obama pledged during a State of the Union address that “if a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it.” The Senate Appropriations Committee soon followed up with a moratorium of its own.
It was a popular move after headlines focusing the
nation’s attention on Alaska’s $223 million “bridge to nowhere” and Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham’s guilty plea to accepting bribes from companies in exchange for steering government contracts their way. President Donald Trump pardoned the eight-term GOP congressman earlier this year.
Over the years, the moratorium has been enforced by party rules and committee protocols. It does not exist in House or Senate rules, or by force of law.
In late February, as Chairwoman
Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., took charge of the powerful Appropriations Committee, she said it was time for a change. Done properly, she and other Democrats say, a defined process for funding requests can make lawmakers more responsive to their constituents.
She has spelled out several requirements that must be met for lawmakers to request funding, including;
All requests must be made online.
Members must certify that they and their family have no financial interest in the projects they request.
Members may request funding for state or local government grantees and for nonprofits, but not to help for-profit corporations. A maximum of 10 requests will be considered per member.
The overall amount of spending on projects must not exceed 1% of discretionary spending. Such spending doesn’t include entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security, or the cost of financing the federal debt.
Norman worries that earmarks would be used to entice Republicans to vote for bills with high price tags.
“In your family budget you have priorities,” Norman said. “And the priority of this country today is to get on a firm financial basis. Will earmarks do that? I would make the argument they will not.”
The Senate appears less further along in its earmark planning, but Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Wednesday he expects to allow lawmakers to request what he called “designated spending.”
“I’m perfectly willing to divide it equally between Republicans and Democrats. And so it will be up to them if they want it. If they don’t, we’ll just have it on the Democratic side,” Leahy said.
MINNEAPOLIS — The first week of jury selection in the trial of a former Minneapolis police officer charged in George Floyd’s death established patterns for how attorneys go about dismissing potential jurors they perceive as unfavorable to their side.
The defense is striking people who tell the court they already have strong feelings about Derek Chauvin’s guilt.
The prosecution, meanwhile, is blocking potential jurors who seem inclined to give police the benefit of the doubt — or who express misgivings about the Black Lives Matter movement.
Though their targets are predictable, there’s an art to how both sides carry it out. Attorneys have sought in their questioning to unearth biases against their case by members of the jury pool, prompting Judge Peter Cahill to dismiss them and saving precious and limited strikes.
They’re not always successful.
One candidate wrote in his questionnaire that he had a “very negative” perception of Chauvin after watching the widely seen video of Floyd’s arrest. When asked to explain, he said he felt that Floyd was treated “worse than an enemy combatant.”
“It reminded me of like a war scene,” he said. “What popped into my mind was images of World War II.”
The man also said that he would have difficulty with the presumption of innocence in this case, and based on the video he saw, it would be hard for him to acquit Chauvin. Yet, despite his strong emotions and statements, when defense attorney Eric Nelson repeatedly asked if the man could abandon his opinions and decide the case impartially based on what is said in court, the man said, “Yes” — thwarting Nelson’s attempts to have the judge dismiss the juror for cause. “If I couldn’t imagine myself saying ‘not guilty,’ I wouldn’t be here,” the man said.
Nelson was forced to use a peremptory strike to keep him off the jury. He gets 15 such challenges that may be used without giving a reason — as long as it’s not solely due to a person’s race. The prosecution gets nine.
The defense attorney had to use another to strike a man who knew many details about the case from several news sources and expressed strong opinions about Floyd’s death in his questionnaire. The man also spoke positively about the protests that followed, saying they solidified the need for change and to end systemic racism.
Nelson noted that the man had posted on Facebook that he visited the site of the fatal confrontation, which has been turned into a memorial, and he called it “holy ground.” Still, like the juror before him, the man kept saying affirmatively that he could set all his opinions aside and weigh the evidence fairly, forcing Nelson to use another peremptory strike.
So far, most of the rejected jurors have been people with negative views of Chauvin. But some have been struck for tilting toward police, or for being skeptical of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Under questioning from prosecutor Steve Schleicher, one man said he had a “somewhat unfavorable” view of Black Lives Matter. He said he thought the movement has “good intentions but has been involved in too much destruction in our city,” and was disapproving of “BLM” graffiti across the city.
It’s “hard not to see those letters,” he said. He also
said he has strong respect for law enforcement and strongly disagrees with the notion of defunding the police, a movement that gained currency after Floyd died.
Schleicher used one of his strikes to dismiss the man.
By day’s end Friday, the defense had used eight peremptory strikes compared with five for the prosecution.
Seven jurors were seated in the opening week. Four were white, one was multiracial, one was Hispanic and one was Black, according to the judge. The court has two more weeks of jury selection blocked out before opening arguments scheduled for March 29.
Several jurors have been dismissed for cause. About two dozen in the pool were so problematic just from the answers they gave on their questionnaires that the attorneys from both sides agreed they should be struck without even facing questioning.
For those potential jurors who have come to the courthouse under security escort through the fences, barbed wire and razor wire, some have been excused for cause because of personal hardships.
But most of those dismissed for cause had unshakable views.
Cahill dismissed one woman for cause after she said outright that she could not be an impartial juror. The woman said Floyd’s death has affected her life, prompting her to volunteer at a nonprofit group that helps underserved and vulnerable children. The judge and prosecution pressed her briefly to make sure she would not change her mind.
“You don’t think that you could give the defendant a fair trial?” Schleicher asked.
“I don’t think I can,” she replied.