Ivan Bates is sending the wrong message

Newly elected Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates said his top priority is illegal guns. He has also pledged to spend more time in the courtroom and take on at least one new case each year.

So I am puzzled as to why he has chosen the case of Gordon Staron, who has been charged in two different murders, in which to invest his valuable time when he has just taken up the reins as state’s attorney (“State’s Attorney Ivan Bates will handle prosecution of man accused of fatally stabbing deaf cellmate in Baltimore jail,” Jan. 20).

This should prove to be exceedingly complicated, the first death involving a man from Harford County, not a city resident.

The man is not even a convicted criminal, nor does he have an extensive criminal record, no drug-related previous arrests. Staron is the alleged killer of Keith Bell at the bus stop at 1400 block of East Monument Street. Bell’s murder did not involve a gun, it was a stabbing and the size of the knife hasn’t been revealed.

Now what subsequently happened in the prison cell and Staron’s alleged role in the fatal strangulation of his deaf cellmate Javarick Gantt is going to add many more wet blankets and years of court time investment. The Staron case will also take on racial overtones as Staron is white and both victims were Black.

This reeks of political grandstanding, something we just voted out. I was hoping for better from Bates, and his court time investment to be a case that would focus on the more important gang-style shootings that have been plaguing Baltimore for years. Unfortunately, this kind of trial will do very little to stem that tide.