More than 18 months after Corrections Officer David McGuinn was fatally stabbed, corrupt activities behind the walls of a Jessup prison that led veteran officers to call it the "House of Corruption" are complicating the state's efforts to send two inmates to the death chamber for the crime.
In legal motions, defense lawyers for the inmates portray conditions at the now-closed Maryland House of Correction as approaching "anarchy."
They have raised the claim by an unidentified witness that McGuinn, a by-the-book officer, was set up by fellow guards to keep him from disrupting their contraband smuggling and other corrupt activities at the maximum-security facility.
But in responses filed with the court this week, attorneys for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services said that claim came from an inmate and that he had no first-hand information. He repeated to state police what he allegedly had been told by another inmate, they said. That person "provided no information directly" to investigators, the lawyers said.
In their legal motions, the state's lawyers also questioned the accuracy of defense claims that state police had identified, in their reports, 21 officers as being involved in corrupt activities.
In some instances, they said, the officers named by the defense team were not assigned to the House of Correction when McGuinn was killed. And in others, there is no credible evidence that officers were involved in illegal activity, they wrote.
The state outlined its position in motions that seek to keep personnel records for corrections officers out of the hands of defense lawyers for Lamarr Harris and Lee Stephens, the two inmates accused of killing McGuinn.
The defense wants disciplinary and investigatory files for 21 officers whom they say witnesses identified to state police as being involved in corruption.
Assistant Attorney General Laura Mullally said in legal motions that the documents the defense seeks are not relevant to the murder case.
Even if the state has records of corrupt behavior by officers, she wrote, they are not subject to disclosure because they fall under exceptions to Maryland's Public Information Act.
State corrections officials have acknowledged that some correctional officers smuggle prohibited items, such as cell phones, tobacco and drugs, into the prisons in exchange for cash or because they have a personal relationship with an inmate.
Contraband smuggling was a particular problem at the antiquated and decrepit House of Correction, which veteran officers often called the "House of Corruption."
After McGuinn's death, cell searches turned up dozens of prohibited items -- enough to cover large conference tables.
Rick Binetti, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, said yesterday that administrators have tightened security at entrances to prisons and are focusing more attention on gang activity and any relationships between known gang members and corrections staff.
Last year, Binetti said, 167 corrections officers and support staff people were reprimanded or suspended for contraband-related violations and 20 were fired. But he said that most cases "are simply people making bad decisions."
The agency has found no evidence of any well-organized, system-wide effort to smuggle items into the state's prisons, which employ about 6,000 corrections officers, Binetti said.
Patrick Moran, executive director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 92, said the union's members don't like corruption any more than administrators.
"No one has an interest in seeing that type of person in the workplace," Moran said.
He said visitors and others are responsible for getting some prohibited items into the prisons and the problem is, in large part, the result of inadequate staffing.
"The vast majority of officers are doing hard work every single day and are doing whatever they can to diminish the amount of contraband coming into the facilities," Moran said.
Prison officials have long said that the smuggling of contraband has been a contributing factor to violence in Maryland's prisons.
McGuinn's stabbing death on July 25, 2006, capped a particularly violent time at the House of Correction. That spring and summer, three inmates were fatally stabbed in inmate-on-inmate violence and two officers were attacked by inmates wielding homemade shanks.
McGuinn, 41, was nicknamed "Homeland Security" because he was uncompromising about following the rules, a union official said shortly after he was killed.
He was attacked by two inmates who allegedly bypassed faulty cell door locks and trapped him in a narrow passageway.
Many key details of what happened at that moment and in its aftermath remain a mystery.
Corrections officials say they can't comment because the matter is still under investigation and because of the pending trials of the two inmates accused of killing him.
greg.garland@baltsun.com