Miscarriage of justice cost mid’s mother her life

The killing of the mother of a recently inducted midshipman at the Naval Academy was entirely preventable, if not for the misguided decisions of Maryland’s justice system and the state legislature.

The man named Angelo Harrod, who has been charged in the killing of Michelle Cummings, had a decadelong record of violence, drug-dealing and fleeing from justice and yet a judge put him back on the street two months before he took the Navy mom’s life on June 29.

With a rap sheet tallying a dozen arrests for serious crimes including multiple gun charges, aggravated assaults and robbery, Harrod was afforded leniency again and again by the criminal justice system — released on low or no bail, and plead out on lesser charges and rarely seeing any jail time. The bulk of his sentences were suspended.

After pleading guilty to a gun charge in April 2016, Harrod supposedly received a three-year sentence but, in fact, was immediately released with two years “suspended” and one year on probation with an ankle monitor. In January 2017, he cut off his monitor and absconded but was apprehended hours later. He would be arrested three more times and put under a domestic violence restraining order while “serving” his three-year sentence.

This February, Harrod was charged with assault, reckless endangerment, and a slew of gun-related charges. When he went to court two months later in April, he was officially “held on bail” but, in reality, was again placed on “supervised released” while facing his newest charges.

In early May, six weeks before he killed Cummings, Harrod once again cut off his ankle bracelet monitor. This time he would not be caught for nearly two months, due to a failure of the system lacking either the technology or the resources to recognize the threat Harrod posed to public safety. Only after he was identified as a “person of interest” in the murder of Cummings was Harrod arrested for his outstanding warrant. About two weeks later, he would be charged with Cummings’ murder.

Harrod’s criminal history of violence and escape should have kept him in prison for decades and, at the very least, locked up safely behind bars ahead of his next trial. But Harrod was free the night he killed the Naval Academy midshipman’s mother, on what may have been the proudest day of her life.

This failure to hold perpetrators like Harrod to account should shake sense into Maryland’s lawmakers who have, of late, pushed for greater leniency toward criminals.

Over the past few years, House of Delegates Speaker Adrienne Jones and the Democratic supermajority in the Legislature have blocked Gov. Larry Hogan’s bills to stiffen penalties for gun offenders like Harrod. One of Hogan’s bills would close a loophole that allows a judge to skirt the mandatory minimum terms under existing law and impose a shorter sentence, or no jail time at all, a provision Harrod apparently benefited from repeatedly.

In Baltimore, a city that still ranks as America’s big city murder capital, approximately 80% of suspected killers have prior criminal records and 40% faced gun charges.

Baltimore City’s gun offenders rarely get jail time even if they are convicted, with half receiving less than a year or no jail at all.

Recent government studies show that firearm offenders are highly likely to commit new, often violent, crimes upon release. And evidence shows that those who illegally carry firearms are significantly more likely to both shoot others and be shot themselves.

Sadly, Cummings’ death is not an isolated incident. Numerous violent gun offenders who were released on bail or given slaps on the wrist went on to commit heinous acts across Maryland. And those are just the cases that make news, countless others go unnoticed.

And there’s no transparency for judges who inexplicably released these criminals — on no bail, “home monitoring,” or after little to no jail time. Lawmakers in Annapolis blocked Hogan’s push to publish judicial decision data on charged crimes, outcomes, and whether the imposed sentences comported with state law.

If we all agree that stopping the senseless and rampant violence, why are highrisk and repeat offenders given third, fourth … tenth chances before they commit horrendous, headline-grabbing crimes and why shouldn’t the public know what is happening to them in court?

Giving reformed offenders a second chance may be compassionate, but Maryland’s zero accountability system is costing lives.