A man who’s accused of shooting two Baltimore County Police officers is asking a judge to throw out the charges against him or prohibit all witnesses from the Police Department from testifying at trial, alleging that prosecutors have engaged in a “pattern of prosecutorial misconduct.”
In court documents filed on Monday, Deborah Katz Levi and James Dills, David Linthicum’s attorneys, asserted that the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office has filed baseless motions to impair the attorney-client relationship; withheld significant information; failed to exercise due diligence; and actively misled them and the judge. That’s along with engaging in conduct, they said, that’s “infected the potential jury pool using social media to inflame emotion.”
“Overall, these events establish, in their totality, that the State’s Attorney’s Office of Baltimore County has engaged in a pattern of prosecutorial misconduct that has critically violated Mr. Linthicum’s constitutional rights to due process, fundamental fairness, the effectiveness assistance of counsel, and the right to prepare and present a defense,” Levi and Dills wrote.
“These rights are safeguarded by and guaranteed to Mr. Linthicum through the United States Constitution and the Maryland Declaration of Rights.”
Linthicum, 25, of Cockeysville, is charged with five counts of attempted first-degree murder and related offenses. He’s accused of shooting Officer Barry Jordan and Detective Jonathan Chih and sparking a dayslong manhunt in 2023.
Levi is director of special litigation for the Maryland Office of the Public Defender in Baltimore. Dills is the district public defender for Baltimore County.
In the filing, Levi and Dills recounted how prosecutors have repeatedly asserted that no investigation into use of force by police has been conducted in the case.
Then on March 11, Levi and Dills said, the state turned over a 110-page summary of a use of force investigation including at least three reports completed in 2023 never previously provided to the defense.
Though prosecutors want to have it a different way, they said, “a rose by any other name is still a rose.” They contended that a use of force investigation, administrative investigation and internal affairs investigation “all refer to the same thing.”
Levi and Dills said it does not matter whether an investigation was opened and paused — prosecutors reported that the Police Department is waiting to conduct one until after the conclusion of the case — or completed.
“The State’s semantics here with the use of the word ‘conducted’ is, anecdotally, exhausting and its inability to provide complete discovery, whatever its motivation may be, has resulted in the State perpetrating a fraud on the Court and opposing counsel and interfering with the administration of justice,” Levi and Dills said.
In the past, Levi and Dills noted, the state received a use of force report but did not disclose that fact to them or the judge and waited four months to hand over the document to the defense. Prosecutors, they said, are claiming that a document with the title “Use of Force Report” is not a use of force report.
They also brought up how the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office gave money to a GoFundMe for Chih that featured an “emotionally charged, one-sided description of the alleged conduct” and did not disclose that donation.
Levi and Dills called the description an “unnecessary, extrajudicial statement” that prosecutors made “in violation of the Maryland Rules and demonstrates the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office lack of impartiality and good judgement.”
Circuit Judge Dennis M. Robinson Jr. has twice admonished prosecutors and expressed concerns about the process in which the state is supposed to turn over information to the defense.
In his latest ruling on Feb. 28, Robinson wrote that it was “not the first time in this case that the State’s adamant and repeated assertions regarding the existence of information turned out to be incorrect.”
Deputy State’s Attorney John Cox and Assistant State’s Attorney Zarena Sita have asked the judge to reconsider his latest ruling, saying that it would be hard to argue that it has not “seriously called into question the integrity and honesty of the attorneys representing the State in this case.”
Cox and Sita assert that the statements in the judge’s opinion are inaccurate.
“A finding of fact by a Judge in a formal pleading is difficult to explain or contest for the attorneys named in the press who now face scrutiny from colleagues, family and friends,” Cox and Sita wrote in court documents filed on March 6. “This is an unfair situation to be placed in with little ability to defend oneself.”
Linthicum is set to appear in court for a motions hearing on April 15. He’s being held without bail in the Baltimore County Detention Center.
