Accused of raping a 9-year-old girl, Willie J. McCoy wa looking at hard time behind bars.
In addition to inflicting psychological wounds, McCoy, 41, had given the child gonorrhea.
But prison wouldn't be his destination. In the assembly line that is Baltimore's arraignment court, McCoy's case was handled in minutes.
Through an assistant public defender he met for the first time the day of his arraignment, McCoy plea-bargained his way to a 30-year suspended sentence and five years' probation.
One day after walking out of court a free man, McCoy violated his probation and disappeared.
McCoy's plea bargain provides a glimpse into the fast-forward pace of justice these days in the part of Baltimore Circuit Court that handles felony arraignments.
It is here, in a courtroom presided over by Judge Kenneth Lavon Johnson, that every person accused of a serious crime in the city comes to enter a plea. Suspected murderers and rapists, robbers and burglars, crack dealers and swindlers. Sometimes 60 defendants a day.
Critics say this crucial stage in the court system has become a machine churning out guilty pleas -- with the judge, prosecutors and public defenders all under pressure to keep the machine humming.
Several other of the 25 Circuit Court judges also approve plea bargains in criminal cases. But Johnson, because he oversees felony arraignments, has the opportunity to approve many more deals than do any of his colleagues.
Moreover, Johnson believes in using long, suspended sentences, coupled with probation, as an inducement so defendants will plead guilty. Most of the deals involve accused ,, drug dealers.
The defendants are warned, by Johnson and their lawyers, that if they violate probation, the judge will give them every day of their sentences.
The Evening Sun has found that:
* Plea bargaining -- the practice of exchanging leniency for guilty pleas -- has become a way of life in a judicial system choked with drug cases. Throughout Baltimore Circuit Court, guilty pleas decide more than 90 percent of the criminal cases that end in conviction or acquittal, court statistics show.
* Prosecutors spend little time trying cases; instead they trade reduced sentences for guilty pleas because there is not enough time, courtrooms or prison space to vigorously prosecute every accused criminal.
* Public defenders, pressured by a dwindling budget and caseloads that make adequate represention virtually impossible, see no alternative to wholesale plea-bargaining.
* Jury trials are rare events in the city, and across the nation. The Bureau of Justice Statistics in Washington reports that nine in 10 felony convictions are the result of guilty pleas, and the ratio holds true for Baltimore.
For every 100 criminal cases that enter Baltimore Circuit Court, just four go before a jury, according to court statistics covering 12,866 cases for the 15 months ending March 31.
The big statistical picture, however, offers little solace to the family of the 9-year-old girl McCoy raped in March 1990.
GIRL'S KIN CRITICIZE COURT
"Plea bargains are a cop-out," her grandmother says. "When a person is charged with a crime as bad as rape, especially the rape of a child, they should go to jail."
"This judge doesn't have any business on the bench," an aunt of the victim says angrily of Johnson. "Children in this country are being exploited and abused and nobody seems to care."
However, the state's case against McCoy was flawed: A delay in reporting the attack ruled out the gathering of physical evidence such as hair and sperm; and the victim was hesitant about confronting her attacker in court.
At the time of the crime, McCoy, an unemployed heroin abuser with a criminal record that includes drug, assault and robbery charges, was living with the girl's mother, who is also a drug addict.
While the mother gave birth to McCoy's son in a local hospital, the defendant baby-sat with the girl and her younger brother. McCoy admitted in court that one night he climbed into the girl's bed and raped her.
The family learned of the rape about a week after it happened, when a doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospital found that the girl had gonorrhea. The child then told of the assault.
"She said McCoy did it," says the grandmother. "She didn't want her mother to know it was actually him. She said he threatened to kill her little brother if she told."
COFFEE, AND FREEDOM
Over cups of coffee in a conference room, the judge discussed the case for several minutes with prosecutor Page Croyder and David Eaton, an assistant public defender, on the morning of McCoy's arraignment.
Johnson then agreed to accept a plea bargain: a 30-year suspended sentence in exchange for a guilty plea to second-degree rape and child abuse. Second-degree rape carries a maximum of 30 years; child abuse 15 years.
The offer was made for the first time shortly after McCoy had been led into Johnson's courtroom with a group of shackled defendants, most of whom were making appearances on drug-trafficking charges.
It is a scene replayed daily in a courtroom known as Part 17.
McCoy nodded approvingly as his defense lawyer described the deal. Within minutes, the assistant public defender had picked up another yellow file folder from the defense table and moved toward the next defendant.
It took longer to process McCoy's release from the City Jail that day than it did to enter his guilty plea.
In addition to probation, McCoy was ordered to undergo drug and psychological screening and to stay away from the victim.
"Don't you come back now!" the judge warned.
McCoy was a free man.
The prosecutor, Croyder, did not call the victim's family to tell them of the outcome. Asked about this by a reporter, Croyder declined to discuss the case.
The girl's grandmother learned that McCoy was on the street one week after his release, when a reporter came to her doorstep with the news.
"He will probably have to rape someone else's baby to violate his probation," she said bitterly.
IN TROUBLE AGAIN
But one day after he walked out of court, McCoy found a less violent way to break probation -- lying to his probation agent. McCoy said he was staying at a house on East Eager Street, but the address doesn't exist.
The discovery of McCoy's fake address was prompted by a reporter's inquiry about the status of his probation. After the inquiry -- nine days after McCoy's plea bargain -- agents with the state Division of Parole and Probation looked for McCoy, without success, at six different addresses.
Despite being on the probation division's highest level of supervision, McCoy had vanished. On April 23 -- 13 days after McCoy was freed -- Johnson signed a warrant for his arrest.
"Mr. McCoy . . . has been afforded the opportunity of probation," his probation agent wrote in a report. "He has violated at least one, possibly two probations [and] served minimal sentences. Mr. McCoy probably has the knowledge to manipulate the system. That is how he knew to provide court and this agency with a fake address."
Johnson, a city judge since 1982, stands by his decision to free McCoy with a suspended sentence and probation.
The judge says he rarely accepts deals for such heinous crimes, but "extraordinary circumstances" forced him to bargain with McCoy.
For instance, the judge noted that the victim's mother was uncooperative with investigators. And the victim was afraid to testify against McCoy.
"The option in that case was to have [a plea bargain] or nothing," Johnson says. "Bring me a better mother as a witness. Find her first, then bring her to me. Bring me a child who has not undergone such trauma so that she could be capable of testifying in court."
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"I'M SHOCKED," DETECTIVE SAYS
One of the detectives who had interviewed the girl questioned the rationale behind the plea bargain. The detective criticized the decision not to go to trial and insisted the case against McCoy was solid.
"I'm shocked," the detective said of the sentence. "What's the purpose of giving somebody 30 years and then suspending it? He had an extensive record.
"The child was not the greatest witness, but children shouldn't be required to be the greatest witnesses."
Judge Johnson, 53, a soft-spoken former civil rights lawyer, says a trial could have resulted in McCoy's acquittal.
"You have to decide whether it's better to let the guy walk free, with no restrictions whatsoever, or is it more preferable to let the guy walk with 30 years hanging over his head [and give him] five years under intense supervision."
He adds, "The psychological damage that child has already undergone was extensive. And it may well have pushed her over the edge to require her to testify. Under those circumstances, a plea bargain is in order."
But the child might have been able to testify against McCoy, her grandmother says. The girl "didn't want to have to get up and tell the details," but might have done so if accompanied in court by a counselor, as is often done in child-abuse cases.
Eaton, a longtime public defender with the office's felony trial unit in Baltimore, handled McCoy's arraignment and about two dozen others that day.
"IT WAS HIS DECISION"
"I laid it out to him," Eaton says of McCoy's plea. "In the final analysis, it was his decision. He felt that, being an older man, he needed to get out now."
The girl has been staying with her grandmother, who takes her to a therapist twice a week at University Hospital. The child's mother, a cocaine and heroin abuser, has been living on the streets, according to relatives.
McCoy's victim "feels like he got off scot free," the girl's grandmother says. "The state's attorney told me a plea bargain was possible. I knew the case looked rather dim, but I wasn't expecting him to go free. He's gotten away with hurting my baby."
The girl thinks about the assault often and cries, the grandmother says. "She feels like she got a rotten deal."
The child's aunt offers stronger words.
"The judge didn't care," she says. "And the state's attorney didn't care because of the background of the victim's mother."
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A LOOK AT THE NUMBERS
But judges, defense lawyers and prosecutors say they are at the mercy of the raw numbers in a court system drowning in drug cases.
Last year, for instance, 44 percent of all District Court drug prosecutions in Maryland -- a total of 65,000 cases -- occurred in Baltimore, according to a recent study by the Baltimore City Bar Association.
Baltimore Circuit Court handled about 8,000 felony cases last year. According to the study, 50 percent of the felonies were direct drug offenses and 90 percent were drug related.
Plea bargaining helps to cope with the numbers. Last year, 7,141 guilty pleas were entered in Baltimore Circuit Court compared with 829 court or jury trials, according to court administrators.
The eight assistant state's attorneys who prosecute drug cases in Circuit Court each handle about 450 cases a year. Some District Court prosecutors handle as many as 70 defendants a day.
"How in the back of your mind do you justify putting people, the state and a jury through two or three weeks worth of very difficult testimony when you get almost 85 percent of the outcome you wanted in a plea?" asks Baltimore State's Attorney Stuart O. Simms.
"The resources," he says, "are just being squeezed in all directions."
Johnson says the public knows little about the plea-bargaining process.
"It's a judgment call and I'm very comfortable with that judgment," he says. "But I can understand why the public questions the process because the public does not have one-tenth of the information that I have."
He turns to the subject of McCoy's plea bargain.
"It's not a decision that one is happy with," the judge says. "No one can be happy with it. I'm not. But it was the only one to make under the circumstances."
NEXT: A typical day in Johnson's courtroom.