Not more than 24 hours after suspects in two separate drug slayings were arrested by Baltimore homicide detectives this month, they were returned to the street -- released on bail by District Court judges.
Within days:
* Witnesses and potential witnesses in the two cases became uncooperative, with some backing away from prior statements and others demanding police protection in a city that has little or no money to spend to ensure the safety of witnesses, police said.
* One defendant apparently managed to remove as many as four semiautomatic weapons from his and his girlfriend's town house before detectives could obtain and execute a search warrant. Packaging material was found for both .40-caliber Glock and Mac-11 weapons, detectives said.
* City homicide investigators, deluged by drug-related violence and angered at the decision to grant bail in premeditated-murder cases, were complaining to superiors and prosecutors alike, arguing for changes in pretrial procedures for homicides.
"The threat level to all witnesses is high," Detective Sgt. Gary Childs wrote in a memo to Capt. John J. MacGillavery, commander of the homicide unit.
Charged in the 1990 murder of a West Baltimore drug dealer, Gregory "Manny" Whyte was released on $100,000 bond even though he was already out on four separate bails totaling $120,000. The other charges pending against him include assault with intent to murder, assault, and drug and handgun violations.
"It's a joke," said Kevin Davis, a veteran detective who had arrested Whyte in the 1990 slaying of a West Baltimore drug dealer. "He's on probation for one gun charge, and he's out on bail in four other cases for guns and drugs. He's charged with a murder, and he gets bail for that, too. It's a revolving door."
Five days later, 23-year-old Ronnie Alexander Hunt was released on $2,500 bond -- a remarkably low amount in any violent crime -- after he and a cousin were charged in the slaying of a rival drug dealer during a gunfight in which more than 70 rounds were fired from semiautomatic weapons. The cousin's bail was $35,000.
In the Hunt case, the arresting detective learned that his suspects were free when his telephone pager began to go off with repeated calls from potential witnesses and informants, who were suddenly in fear and demanding protection.
"They were calling me terrified, saying 'He's out. He's on the corner. What the hell are you guys doing?' " says Detective Harry Edgerton, a 10-year veteran of the homicide unit. "And there wasn't much I could tell them."
For detectives and prosecutors accustomed to seeing defendants in drug-related slayings denied bail, the recent cases seem part of an ominous trend. The danger, they argue, is real: Another drug homicide defendant granted bond by a District judge last year is now the suspect in another murder and two attempted murders, prosecutors acknowledge.
In the recent cases, the decisions by District Court judges to grant bail resulted from a variety of factors -- some of which suggest that pretrial release procedures in city courts are strained beyond their limits:
* In the Whyte case, no prosecutor was present to counter a defense attorney's arguments at the bail hearing. Staffing limitations in the state's attorney's office leave many such hearings unattended.
In the wake of the recent releases, detectives are urging prosecutors to ensure state representation, possibly by holding bail hearings for all homicides in one courtroom. Deputy State's Attorney Alexander Palenscar said centralized booking for city courts is being studied by Joseph A. Ciotola, chief judge of the Baltimore district bench.
In the case involving Hunt and his cousin, Harry Johnson III, the prosecutor was interrupted by the judge when he attempted to argue that the defendants, by virtue of the offense charged and their criminal history, were dangers to the community.
"The judge started to rule before I even spoke," said Monroe Brown, an assistant state's attorney at the Wabash Avenue District Court. "He made it clear he wasn't interested in anything I had to say."
In an interview, Judge Alan B. Lipson acknowledged that he cut Mr. Brown off but said he did so when it became clear to him that the prosecutor was not adding anything to information contained in the statement of charges.
"That day, I was handling 64 bail hearings," said the judge. "There isn't time to dawdle."
* In both cases, the judges expressed concerns about the quality of the evidence in the statement of charges prepared by detectives and signed by court commissioners. Under state law, the evidence against a defendant is one of several factors to be considered by judges at bail hearings, the first step in the prosecutorial process.
However, detectives and prosecutors say they routinely provide a minimum of evidence in initial charging documents, choosing to reveal the bulk of their case after indictment in order to protect witnesses and preserve trial strategy.
"A bail hearing is not the place to get into evidentiary matters," said Timothy V. Doory, who heads the Violent Crimes Unit of the state's attorney's office. "Ideally, that should be considered at the preliminary hearing."
* Also in the Whyte case, an investigator from pretrial services recommended bail of $150,000 to Judge Joseph P. McCurdy Jr. after explaining that Whyte was on probation for a prior handgun conviction and had two drug cases pending.
In addition to the 1988 gun possession charge for which he received five years' probation, Whyte has been arrested at least nine times in the past two years.
Separate charges of assault with intent to murder, conspiracy to distribute heroin, cocaine distribution and repeated handgun charges are pending against him. Since November, police say they have seized three handguns, soft body armor, heroin, drug-cutting agents and $30,000 cash in repeated arrests.
In fact, when homicide detectives charged him with murdering Andre Poole, a narcotics dealer from a West Baltimore high-rise project, Whyte was on the street after having posted $120,000 bail in four cases that are still pending, prosecutors said.
Pretrial services supervisors could not be reached for comment. Judge McCurdy, recently appointed to the city circuit bench, NTC said in an interview that he was never made aware of allegations about organized drug connections, the totality of Whyte's criminal history or the state's concern for the safety of witnesses.
"I can only say that I would consider anything put before me," the judge said.
Judge McCurdy required $100,000 bail, and Whyte was released after immediately posting the required 10 percent of that amount with a bondsman.
Detectives and prosecutors argue that even high bail fails to deter defendants in cases linked to organized drug trafficking. Simply put, suspects have the money to post bond.
As if to add insult to injury, detectives say the first word they got that Manny Whyte was back on the street came from Ronnie Hunt, who at the time of his arrest reportedly told Detective Edgerton that he wasn't worried: "My lawyer will get me a bail just like he got Manny a bail."
Both cases were handled by the same defense firm, and in both cases, the defense counsel successfully argued that the probable cause used by detectives to obtain warrants was insufficient or weak.
"The state has made absolutely no case whatsoever," defense attorney Alan L. Cohen declared at Hunt's hearing.
Likewise, Mr. Cohen's partner, Paul Polansky, argued that the case against Whyte in the 1990 murder, based largely on the testimony of a grand jury witness that detectives declined to identify prior to indictment, was weak.
Judge McCurdy agreed that the statement of charges "does leave a lot unsaid."
In an interview, Mr. Polansky denied that the two cases were in anyway related to a drug organization and criticized detectives for publicly questioning the judicial process outside of court.
"They think they're above the law. If the judge doesn't do what they want, they go to the press," Mr. Polansky said. "The cases are weak. In fact, the bottom line is that Ronnie Hunt should never have been charged."
Judge Lipson agreed with that assessment, saying that he found little in the charges to connect Hunt or his cousin to the murder of Sheldean Simon April 10 in a prolonged gunbattle on North Kossuth Street.
"There was nothing in the information provided on which to hold these gentlemen," he later told a reporter. "There was nothing in the statement of charges."
Detectives and prosecutors disagree, arguing that in any event, the probable cause was sufficient to obtain warrants from a commissioner. A review of the evidence, they contend, should occur not at a bail review but at a preliminary hearing.
In his statement of charges, the detective described the killing and then related how the murder weapon was recovered in a stop of a Toyota truck by district officers days after the murder. The truck was being driven by Mr. Johnson, Hunt's cousin, and Hunt was a passenger. Repair orders and other documents found in the car indicated that the truck, which was registered in the name of Hunt's aunt, was actually in his control.
A ballistics test matched the gun to spent bullets found on Kossuth Street. When asked how they came to be in possession of a gun used in Mr. Simon's murder, the two men gave conflicting statements, according to the statement of charges.
Hunt also had a bullet wound to the thigh, which he claimed was the result of an unrelated robbery that he had reported after showing up at Liberty Medical Center soon after the gunbattle occurred. The charging documents noted that Hunt made inconsistent statements about how and when he sustained the wound.
Before the bail hearing, ballistics experts also compared a bullet taken from Mr. Simon's body to the recovered pistol, confirming that it was the murder weapon. Mr. Brown, the prosecutor, said that he relayed this fact verbally to Judge Lipson before he was interrupted.
Nonetheless, Judge Lipson dismissed the charging document, noting that days had passed between the murder and the recovery of the murder weapon: "Guns tend to keep changing hands in these communities," he said.
In the case against Hunt, a pretrial investigator recommended no bail, citing the nature of the offense and Hunt's criminal history. He has a handgun conviction, a drug conviction and arrests for assault and assault by shooting, court records indicate.
Judge Lipson, however, said police were obligated to present better evidence before asking him to consider the defendant's dangerousness.
"They have the cart before the horse," he said.