The two candidates for Anne Arundel County state's attorney were at The Sun newsroom in Pasadena on Oct. 10 to debate. Incumbent Democrat Frank Weathersbee and Republican John Greiber were questioned by three Sun reporters for more than an hour. What follows is an edited transcript of that exchange.
Mr. Weathersbee, does it harm prosecutions for assistant state's attorneys to engage in part-time private practice?
Weathersbee: No, I don't think so. In a majority of the offices throughout the state, part-time practice is allowed. Some of the larger offices, including Baltimore County, allow it. It's always been a shame to me that you could go to law school and spend so much time garnering an education and then you get into a job and then after hours you can't write contracts or wills or whatever. I felt that unless there was some obvious conflict attorneys should be allowed to do that. In our office, very few attorneys have taken that option, six, as far as my count goes. Only one of those attorneys has what I would call a private practice, where he has a law office that he goes to in the evening. Other than that the attorneys -- and I've talked to them all -- handle minor matters for friends and relatives. I know ethical considerations have been raised concerning attorneys handling private clients. But I point out that all attorneys are under the canons of ethics and are precluded from getting into conflicts of interest.
Greiber: The National Association of Prosecutors recommends against the private practice of law by assistant state's attorneys. The ABA strongly recommends against the private practice of law by assistant state's attorneys. In 1978, Steven Sachs, the Democratic attorney general, prohibited the practice in his office. In 1982, Mayor [Kurt] Schmoke prohibited the practice in Baltimore City. Contrary to what Frank says about Baltimore County, I'll quote you [the regulation] that says that the 24 assistants designated as full-time assistant state's attorneys may not engage in the private practice of law. I think it is a question of ethics. I think it's a question that raises a double standard. When we first started off, Frank said there were none, then there was one and now there are six, before there was eight.
Weathersbee: He keeps bringing up Baltimore County. There are more than 24 assistants in Baltimore County and some of them are allowed to have private practices. That's what the law says.
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Mr. Greiber, as an attorney specializing in constitutional law, why are you qualified for job as the county's chief prosecutor?
Greiber: The constitution of our state, unless we want to revise it, says [a state's attorney must be] a member of good standing with the bar [association] and a resident of the county for two years. The National Association of Prosecutors says a member in good standing of the bar. I don't know anybody who would limit it to just criminal-type of lawyers, which raises an interesting point. Frank will concede that criminal lawyers can practice civil law, but he wants to discriminate: Civil lawyers can't practice criminal law. The main components of criminal law are, in fact, constitutional. The great body of criminal law is rather fundamental. It dates back to the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal. If criminal law were so complex that people could not conform their conduct to it, it would be constitutionally restrictive and prohibited. So I have a background that lets me go into the various amendments of the Constitution and their historical context. For instance, the Fourth Amendment -- whether it's civilly or in the case of police excessive force or in a search and seizure case -- the component word is reasonable. The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable search and seizure. In the great body of criminal law, it's either search and seizure or arrest -- that's the Fourth Amendment. Quite candidly, if you had a defense lawyer sitting here he wouldn't be able to tell you when it was he last won a suppression motion or hearing because it has been exceptioned away. You almost have to show bad faith . . . by the officer in the warrant. With the background in constitutional law and the fact that I'm a licensed lawyer and I clerked for a judge and was exposed to 300 or 400 serious cases, qualifies me eminently for this position.
Weathersbee: There are two major areas of the law, criminal and civil. John has consistently indicated that one of those two large areas are simple and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to handle it. The bottom line is: John has no criminal law experience. Period. Of the prosecutors in the six largest jurisdictions other than Anne Arundel County, prior to that individual becoming the state's attorney, they had an average of nine years of criminal experience of one kind or another. And if you include the time they've been state's attorney, it's like 24 years. Prosecutors, if they really want to be prosecutors, have some criminal law experience.
Greiber: Let me point out that the rocket scientist comment attributed to me was made in this paper by [candidate] Tim Murnane in the last election. It's been attributed to me. I was trying to explain it. Put it this way, Frank says in your paper, 'I don't have any good answers about criminal law,' and, 'It's really boring stuff.' Well, if he doesn't have any really good answers and it's boring stuff then I think he shouldn't run anymore.
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Mr. Weathersbee, you've been criticized for relying too heavily on plea bargains to increase your conviction rate. Explain how you decide which cases can be plea bargained and which cannot.
Weathersbee: It's a complicated issue, but I'm telling you this is one area of the law where experience as a criminal attorney is very beneficial. One of the things a prosecutor has to do is make choices: What's the best way to get the conviction, what's the best way to allow the appropriate sentence to occur. Fortunately, pleas are one of the ways you can do it. Our policy, which is in writing, is that we don't accept pleas -- pleas are looked down upon -- unless there's some good explainable reason why you've let them occur. Our attorneys are divided into four trial teams and there's a trial team leader for each trial team and they discuss potential pleas in various cases and the bottom line is it's my job to get a conviction, it's their job to get a conviction and to allow for an appropriate sentence. A plea very often is the best way to do it and the end result is we get a plea to the most serious offense as we would have gotten if we had tried the case. We avoid the risk of trial, which is important. We provide closure to the victims. We keep police on the street. And ultimately, although this is the least important consideration, we save money. So, pleas are important in what prosecutors do, not just in Anne Arundel County, but around the state. And we do it carefully.
Greiber: Plea bargains should comprise three or four components. Any bargain, in civil or in criminal, is predicated on a quid pro quo -- a this for that. In other words, if the state will retain part of its bargain, what it's getting for something -- then a plea bargain may be appropriate. Where in the Scotland Williams case, for example, the probable outcome of that case was that Scotland Williams was going to walk free and we indicted him for burglary, then I submit we got nothing for our bargain and we should have . . . that's a naked bargain -- and we shouldn't have.
Weathersbee: It just amazes me that he uses the Williams case constantly. Williams could have gotten 15 years if he pled guilty to felony theft. Without going into the burglary aspects of this, he could have gotten 15 years from Judge [Duckett]. We asked for a presentence investigation. The presentence investigation was denied by the judge in question and he went ahead and sentenced him to time served. That was the judge's choice. The prosecutor can't determine what the verdict is.
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Mr. Greiber, how would you use plea bargains differently than Mr. Weathersbee?
Greiber: I think you have to analyze each case on a quid pro quo -- a this for that. In the Scotland Williams case, had the assistant been prepared for that case -- and let's point out that he's one of those assistants that advertises in the Yellow Pages and traditionally has one of the worst records for the length of time it takes him to get his case to trial. What I would do differently is look at all these cases and say that if the probable outcome of the plea bargain is that the man is going to walk out of court, in this case there was an indictment on it, then I would not enter into a plea bargain. Sometimes you necessarily have to fall on the sword and take the case to trial. But in those instances when you can go in and make very strong recommendations -- say, 'Hey look, in Baltimore, again the Scotland Williams case, he got six months for just [passing a bad] check. Here, it's a major felony count we're talking about.' He minimally should have gotten six months. Had he gotten six months, Scotland Williams would have been in jail and two lawyers -- two fine people -- would have been alive today. And let me tell you this, too, I read that transcript from the Williams case and these are the exact words by [prosecutor Eugene] Whissel: 'If your honor wants to sentence today I don't believe justice would be offended.' Not only was justice offended, two people lost their lives because of it.
Weathersbee: He keeps talking about the Williams case. . . . The background of Williams, had he looked into it . . . probably wouldn't have ended up helping him. As we do in every felony case in Circuit Court, we ask the court to impose or to order presentence investigation. I don't know that anything would have resulted in that, but we asked. The judge denied it. The transcript is available to you all. Prior to the statement that Mr. Greiber refers to our attorney . . . he said 'Judge, I want you to
order a presentence.' And the judge said no.
Greiber: That's not the case. That's not what the record shows. There's nothing in [the law] that would have prevented that. And Frank knows about collateral estoppel [the doctrine that once a court has decided an issue, it can't be retried]. He should have known in the [James and Roger] Emory case that he never should have gone back 20 years [to trace old criminal activities], which the Court of Appeals reversed that case.
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Mr. Weathersbee, your opponent has proposed using volunteers provide victims and witnesses assistance and use the money now spent on full-time professional advocates to hire more prosecutors. Could this work?
Weathersbee: No. It shows a total lack of experience on John's part. The fact that he's had no contact with the criminal justice system, if it shows any place, it's here. Continuing crisis intervention that is practiced by our advocates -- trained and professional advocates -- is the model not only for this state but for other states. They have to be full time. I mean, volunteers are nice and you use them wherever you can, but just to say, as Mr. Greiber has said, 'Well, there are lots of victims out there. They want to volunteer' is to assume, No. 1, they're qualified just because they were victimized, and No. 2, that they want to volunteer their services as opposed to work somewhere. It's just irresponsible to say that. I thought he was making this proposal to save money, but he wants to spend the money on more prosecutors. I assume he's made an analysis and has concluded we need more prosecutors. We don't need more prosecutors. There will come a time that we will need more prosecutors. But to just hire six more prosecutors just because you want to hire six more prosecutors and get rid of a victims' assistance program that is one of the best is just ridiculous.
Greiber: I never said I was against victims' rights. I think this is the classic approach of a liberal vs. a conservative in solving a management problem. What I said was I wanted to model our program and right-size it. I would point out that the Montgomery County case, which I used as a model, Montgomery County is twice our size and we have twice the number of people that they have down there. What I'm trying to do is right-size the problem and tap into what they're doing down there, and that's utilize the great pool of volunteers and right-size ours to coordinate the use of volunteers. In Montgomery County, I'll tell you right now, there's 172 volunteers -- they're trained. Our Department of Mental Health here has 40 trained volunteers who do this very same thing. I'm not talking about doing it, I'm saying that if they have 850,000 people and we have 450,000 people and we have eight and they have two, there's a reason for the savings and we can do that. Let's get into the primary focus of what prosecution is.
Weathersbee: In Anne Arundel County, we have a total of eight advocates and we spend on those advocates about $330,000 [annually]. In Montgomery County they have a total of 14 they have organized differently, not just in the office. And they pay a total of $600,000.
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Mr. Greiber, can voters expect you to personally prosecute major cases? Why? or Why not?
Greiber: Yes they can, and I will. While the primary function of the state's attorney is the person who sets a vision for what the state's attorney's office should do, I think the people of this county should see their state's attorney in court. Frank . . . said he had actually tried a case. It was two years ago. I spoke to the public defender that he lost that case to, Mark Blumberg. It was one of the simplest cases, it was a controlled and dangerous substance case -- a hand-to-hand deal -- and he lost the case. The real fact of the matter is that most state's attorneys do not get into court as much as they'd like to, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't. Until an election year, Frank didn't decide to get into court. Now, all of the sudden he's like the atheist who has 11th-hour religion and breaks out into 'Nearer My Lord to Thee.' He wants to be in court on Scotland Williams [double murder trial] and many other cases. I won't do that. I won't pander to election-year politics. What I'm going to do is take serious cases on a regular basis. And I'd also like to go down to District Court and take a docket for a day and find out exactly what's going on in District Court. I don't know that Frank's ever done anything like that. This is not an original idea with me. It was suggested four years ago and I think it merits a lot of attention. In that instance, where a lot of the cases are, the state's attorney would be able to see what's going on.
Weathersbee: In my 23 years as a prosecutor, I've tried thousands of cases. I had my first murder case in 1972 and I've had many murder cases since then. I try and keep one or two cases that I'm trying at any given time. I think that's good, but as John points out, in most of the major jurisdictions the prosecutor doesn't handle or try cases. I've continued to try criminal cases and I will continue to do so.
Greiber: We agree that there's one thing, they don't try. So that leaves one thing open and that is, what's the position? The position is one that is a management position, an administrative position, one that you depend very heavily on your chief deputies. It's one where you set the tempo of activity in the state's attorney's office to adjust to changing times. I think if there's probably anything that I would criticize the state's attorney's office for is in the elective process. It has not been challenged within the last 20 years.
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Mr. Greiber, what kind of attorneys would you hire to become your prosecutors? What qualifications would you look for?
Greiber: I think the word qualifications is the key. I think that, A: you would look at attorneys who were experienced trial attorneys, not necessarily criminal trial attorneys, but trial attorneys. A trial attorney, by definition, takes almost any kind of case. In my practice, I do constitutional cases that involve police brutality, I do constitutional cases that involve adoption, wrongful adoption. I do constitutional cases that involve congressional redistricting. You are a trial attorney. I would definitely not look, as it has been suggested, for Republicans' political favoritism. I wouldn't do that. I think qualifications. And that's a very good question, but it's a question I have to see, and it also assumes I'm going to be hiring a lot. I would assume that under my leadership we'd have a little change with those there. It's like Patton, he didn't fire or court martial every one soldier when he took and reorganized the Africa Corps. What he did is reorganize the troops he had and made a little bit better fighting machine and that's what I intend on doing.
Weathersbee: The attorneys that we hire, the prosecutors, when an opening is available, when we take applications, we have applications constantly coming in. We pick applications out giving first consideration to people who live in Anne Arundel County and then we interview -- my two deputies and I -- we have a rating system that we rate the applicants based upon their application as well as their interview and then we make a choice and then we make an offer.
Greiber: I think that's a sound managerial practice. I think you have to look at every individual, at his experience. I would note that traditionally most state's attorney's positions were filled by first-year law students coming out to get their practice. And they would stand there for four or five years. In Anne Arundel County, the problem is we're top heavy and there's not enough room for the people in the middle brackets.
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Mr. Weathersbee, why did you choose personally to try the Scotland Williams case?
Weathersbee: It's an important case. I have no . . . it's an important case. I'm good at murder cases.
Greiber: I would suggest that there have been no shortage of murder cases. In the last two to three years I haven't seen him try any. But I think the better question is, why was it [the trial] postponed until after the election? It seems to me they can get O. J. Simpson on trial before the election. I don't know why we couldn't have gotten Scotland Williams on trial before the election. The real fact of the matter is, if Frank wants to be honest about it, it was a high-profile case and he wanted to come in on the side of the death penalty, something that he has probably lacked a lot of force and vigor for.
Weathersbee: My inclination has always been to ask for the death penalty when it's appropriate and we certainly have done that in the number of cases -- five since I've been state's attorney. We will continue to do it, based on the criteria that we've established.
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Mr. Greiber, you've blasted Mr. Weathersbee for disposing of minor District Court cases without prosecuting them. Yet figures supplied by the state show Anne Arundel's record of dismissal is no better or worse than other jurisdictions. What's the beef?
Greiber: The beef is I'm not sure that's correct. . . . I would talk about the Administrative Office of the Courts and DWI cases, which are District Court cases. We have the highest percentage of not guilties of any of the counties -- 792. We take and dismiss a lot of cases in Anne Arundel County because we write two [traffic] tickets for DWI cases, an A and a B, whereas all other counties, without exception, use a uniform ticket that includes four offenses. So we need to talk about salvaging that system because what that involves is two subpoenas to every attorney that goes out. There's a direct cost related to that that involves a time and motion study of every officer standing outside of the car, writing two tickets as opposed to one. So, am I criticizing the District Court process? Yes, and that's why I think it would be a good thing as Mr. [Tim] Murnane suggested in the last election for state's attorney to get down there to District Court and find out what's going on. I think probably what you'd find out down there is that [defense] attorneys like Gill Cochrane use that as an ancillary office in there. When [prosecutor] Billy Katcef's out, they're in there in the office, making their calls, putting their feet up on the desk. These are things that shouldn't happen. These are large supporters of Frank's and these are things that really need to be corrected down there.
Weathersbee: Another example of John's inexperience. He originally came out a year ago, saying, 'Oh my gosh, look at all the losses in DWI cases.' Then he realized that the figures reflected the number of tickets that are written up and not the number of convictions. Once he realized that he said, 'Oh my gosh, we're writing up two tickets for the same charge.' He's just flat-out wrong as usual. Most important, he didn't answer the question as far as [disposing of minor cases] in District Court. The problem with District Court, it's not a problem it's statewide, is that those charges are not brought by the state's attorney. The state's attorney has to screen out -- and we have a special unit for screening -- that eliminate many of the charges because those charges would be unfair to bring. The victims don't want to bring the charges in the end. There are many other reasons why these charges are not brought, and he just doesn't understand.
Greiber: Thank you, Frank, because that's just where I wanted you to be. If you look on page 87 of the Administrative Office of the
Courts [book] -- and this is what I'm talking about -- it says cases filed: 12,948 cases; prosecuted, 14,134. So the ones that are dismissed are not dismissed for that. They were more than probably dismissed because [the state's attorney's office decided not to prosecute]. Originally, I did not talk about that. It was clear for everybody to see the figure is 7,689 and you can figure out the problem immediately. What you can't explain away is the 792 not guilties because that has nothing to do with the nol pros or stet.
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Mr. Weathersbee, why does it take longer to bring cases to trial in Circuit Court in Anne Arundel County than elsewhere in Maryland? And does it matter?
Weathersbee: No. 1, I don't think it does take longer. This figure that has been brought up in the Administrative Office of the Courts book, I've looked at it, I've looked at it with Judge [Raymond G.] Thieme. In Anne Arundel County there is no backlog. You can get a jury trial next week if you want. We've closed more cases over the last three years than we've opened. All of the indications day by day are that this is not a problem. The statistics in the Administrative Office of the Courts come from the individual Clerk of Courts offices. Baltimore County happens to be a county that says 89 [days] is the average time it takes to get a case from filing to sentencing. If there's a presentence investigation that takes from six to eight weeks, which they do -- and I've talked to Baltimore County, and they do take six to eight weeks there just like Anne Arundel County -- that means their average time to trial is 30 to 45 days. I asked their deputy, 'Is that true in your felony cases?' And the answer is no, it's not true. Where do you get your figures from? I don't know. The figures are nice, but the important point is in Anne Arundel County, we get cases tried expeditiously and there's no backlog. We close more cases than we open.
Greiber: That's just not correct. There is a reason for it, and I submit the reason for it goes back to the private practice of law and the scheduling . . . It's the same criteria [time to trial] used for everybody. If you listen to what Frank says very carefully, the Achilles' heel of his argument is present. He says six to eight weeks for presentence investigation, well that's six to eight weeks for everybody. So that if you lower everybody's ratio by six to eight weeks, we still come out 32 days above everybody else. And the question is, why?
Weathersbee: He talks about scheduling, he slips that in there. Scheduling is handled by the state's attorney's office. It's a Circuit Court decision as to why we handle that. The court can control it and take it back any time they want. It would
cost them an additional $180,000 to do it, as they have estimated. A letter from Erica Wolf, one of the [court] masters, argued that they shouldn't [change] it because it works well.
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Mr. Greiber, you have accused Mr. Weathersbee of being soft on crime and dismantling several juvenile programs in the state's attorney's office. What types of juvenile programs do you think the state's attorney's office needs and how will you implement them?
Greiber: I think the first thing we need is . . . a juvenile priority team. Juvenile crime is the predominant area of crime that is going to produce the adult criminal. We need quick and certain intervention in that area. In Anne Arundel County right now, we don't have a juvenile crime unit. We have one person, it's my understanding, that's in charge of that and that is absolutely deplorable. What I would do, as most other jurisdictions do, is have an active juvenile priority unit, which would probably comprise three to four attorneys. Maybe that's why I need to manage a little bit better so that I can take those precious resources to get three or four more attorneys to put into units like that to address crime. We need to realize that the primary focus of the state's attorney's office is to prosecute criminal cases so that we won't have victims. We need to get back into the Scared Straight program. It's fallen by the wayside and we need to get back into that. We need visitation programs. We need to be very pro-active in the schools. We need to talk about disruptive students in schools with the school superintendent, [Dr. Carol] Parham. These are all very good programs that people are getting involved in. In Georgia and California, they have some truancy programs that we need to get very pro-actively involved in. So mine would be a very broad-brush approach to the juvenile problem, keyed by a fully staffed complement of assistants to address juvenile crime.
Weathersbee: The Scared Straight program, the Shock Trauma visitation program are two very good programs started by our office, another example of initiative on our part. They continue, they have not stopped, they've been transferred to Juvenile Services. If Mr. Greiber had any knowledge about the criminal justice system he would know that. We use in our juvenile system a victim-witness advocate, something almost no other prosecutor's office does. We started juvenile restitution many, many years ago as a method of collecting restitution when the probation officers and juvenile services couldn't do that. Our [juvenile] unit is comprised of a screener and we use all of our major attorneys, trial team by trial team -- sexual offenses, violent crime. These are the people who try the juvenile crimes. These are the people who try the adult crimes and we went to that years ago because it is far better than what other jurisdictions use.
Greiber: The juvenile justice system is broken. It's dysfunctional. It's predicated on a premise that was established in 1899 by the state of Illinois that talks about truancy and the reason for not putting juveniles in prison with adult criminals. We need to revisit this issue in a major, major way. And we're not going to do that by having other makeshift programs occur.
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Mr. Weathersbee, regarding juvenile crime, how much responsibility should be shouldered by the state's attorney's office and how much belongs in the hands of police and the schools?
Weathersbee: Our job is to prosecute and that's been said here a number of times. In the case of juvenile crime, the instant the events come from juvenile services -- they all go through juveniles services to the state's attorney's office -- a number of changes, which I have participated in through the legislature have been made over the years to reduce the age at which an individual becomes an adult. I'm chairman of the legislative committee of the Maryland State's Attorney's Association. I'm constantly over in front of the legislature. Certainly, the prosecutor must prosecute juvenile cases. We've continued to do it at an increasing rate year year after year. Some of the programs that I've listed in the answer to the last question are very important aspects of what one has to do. Our program, Take Back Our Streets, which I think is very important and initiated in Freetown of our county. This is a problem that gets to the heart of the kid and tries to . . . keep him going straight.
Greiber: In Anne Arundel County, and I'm quoting here the
Department of Juvenile Services, 'The number of criminal youth cases screened by the state Department of JuvenileServices is increasing at a faster rate in Anne Arundel County than in Baltimore City.' It's increasing in Annapolis. We've jumped ahead of the state by one-third. We are not responding to the system at least minimally as well as other jurisdictions are responding to it. Otherwise, we would be minimally, again, on a par with them. We need to look at this in an overall, very, very, very task force-type way. We can't have one person -- Michael Burgeson, I think it is -- with a Scotch-taped nameplate on his door that says 'Juvenile Services.' This is too serious of a problem.
Weathersbee: Juvenile crime in Anne Arundel County isn't increasing quicker than it is in Baltimore City. If you want to look at the figures, I'll be happy to supply them to you. It's increasing at a tremendous rate in Baltimore City, but it's increasing at a very limited rate in Anne Arundel County.
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Mr. Weathersbee, if you remain in office, what new programs are you planning to implement?
Weathersbee: We've got a history of implementing many, many programs over the years. I would exgrams over the years. I would expand the use of our trial teams to concentrate our expertise in various areas, such as sexual offenses and controlled dangerous substances, and by including victims' advocates, more victims' advocates, within each of the trial teams and include investigators within each of the trial teams to enhance the prosecution. That's something we ought to do, something I've always wanted to do. I'd expand the services to include the District Court. Right now, we just deal with domestic violence, but there are many other offenses at the District Court level that have . . . victims involved. Our forfeiture unit needs to continue, I don't know whether it can expand anymore than it is, but certainly we have expanded it to include . . . the elimination of a number of crack houses. Certainly in dealing with drugs, the area is ripe for expansion. . . . I've always wanted to provide a urinalysis program so you get ahold of the drug user right at the point of arrest.
Greiber: Community prosecution. I think that we have to establish a rapport much like the police have with the communities. Montgomery County has a good model. They assign prosecutors by geographic locations that work hand in glove with the police department. Screening in the jail. In the last election Frank said he wanted to prevent a hostile takeover by Tim Murnane, a public defender. I submit there's been an intellectual takeover by the public defender's office. Everything from the status conference to the screening programs in the jail come from the public defender's side of the equation. We need to get someone over there to start screening cases. We need to talk about treatment programs like they have in P.G. County, Charles County, Washington County. Crack houses? I think one article was written that he was bulldozing his way to the election. If he was so interested in crack houses, why didn't he do the Emorys or why didn't he do the Hibblers?
Weathersbee: There's an awful lot of programs we've initiated over the years. Community prosecution is a nice PR tool. I don't think it has the advantages of trial teams, putting your resources into groups of prosecutors that handle drugs, for instance, as opposed to spreading out your prosecutors on various areas of the county.
Mr. Greiber, you have said the state's attorney's office is not responsive to citizens. If elected, what will you do to change that?
Greiber: This is one of the areas where you have to become pro-active. Doing the community prosecution is probably the best program one can talk about. The police are finding that it works very well, that if you go out into the community, the people develop a rapport, a trust, in familiar faces. That's just basic common sense. I think in that area we can work hand in glove with the police and capitalize on the great foundation that they've started that we can get people to come forward to testify, not reluctantly, but willingly. If you look at the Department of Justice statistics, they really feel that the crime that we have now represents about 50 percent, because most of the crime, or minimally 50 percent of it goes unreported. So clearly, if we could get out into the community prosecution areas and develop upon the fine work our police depertment is doing right now, I think that we can bring a better understanding of what crime is doing to our communities.
Weathersbee: The Take Back Our Streets program is a very, very good example of community policing. I've been involved in that since its inception. I like to see, and it will spread, to other neighborhoods in Anne Arundel County, where you are actually going in and you're causing the children to have some trust in police officers. To the extent that individual prosecutors can be involved in that, that's very good. Our victim-witness assistance program -- not to point out that we were the second unit in the state to be developed back in the 1970s and that we have continued to help victims and witnesses of crime for more than a decade and are the model around the state and in other states for these type programs -- would be to ignore a very, very #F important program.
Greiber: I guess that last one was directed at me. One is a dollar and sense and people approach, which is Frank's, and mine is a management sense. What I'm trying to do is say this, the mission of the state's attorney's office is to prosecute cases so that we won't have victims. If we get better at doing that, we will have a less need, by definition, for those victims to have counseling, to have crisis intervention. That's what I'm concerned about.
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Mr. Weathersbee, do you think it's proper for assistant state's attorneys to contribute to the campaign of the state's attorney? Why? or Why not?
Weathersbee: I'm not a wealthy person. I've never been particularly political in my handling of the state's attorney's office. I'm very proud that individuals who know what I do, such as my assistants and others who know something about criminal law, are willing to contribute to my re-election campaign. There's no requirement that they do, but I'm happy that they do.
Greiber: No, I will not. I think the Gerry Anders' [DWI] case, where he's contributed, between he and his wife, almost $3,500 makes it very difficult to discipline a person when you have that type of contribution coming to you. But let me point out something else. Under [former state's attorney] Warren Duckett, policy rules and regulations, No. 13 is: 'No political activities are to be conducted by attorneys or employees within the office and no other employees will seek elective office or use his official position within the office to further his political role of any party or candidate.' I think that's a sound policy and I don't know why Frank is ignoring it. It's there. It hasn't been changed. When you reach out to your employees, again, it becomes a problem of disciplining them and that's very difficult. It's not important that they like you; it is important that they respect you.
Weathersbee: The fact that [prosecutor] Bill Mulford, a Republican, is running for the County Council I think is something that he has a right to do. So, I've allowed him to do that. Whether or not that's a good idea, we'll determine that in the future.
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Mr. Greiber, you criticized Mr. Weathersbee for dropping the charges against Edward Mcleod, the suspect in the slaying of nightclub owner JoAnn Valentine. Tell us how you would have handled the situation differently.
Greiber: If you had a policeman in here right now, he'd tell you like he wants it to be. He wants them [prosectors] to look at the case and say, 'This is about as good as it gets.' Initially, I agree, there is a point in time when you have to say, 'If we aren't developing other leads, let's not be over-precipitous, let's wait, let's be cautious about it.' But right now, after it's been over a year, [the case] has gotten about as good as it's going to get. And I think we could have looked at that and probably figured out, oh, in the five or six months after that it had gotten about as good as it was going to get. You had the gun that was admittedly in his possession. You had the chain of custody of that gun all the way up until the time that it was found in his [Mcleod's] trunk in the parking lot when the police got him. There is an inference that may arise there. Circumstantial evidence is just, as weighty as direct evidence. There's no difference. In most cases you don't have direct evidence, you have circumstantial evidence. So I think that's a very, very important factor. There are points in time when, for the public, you have to go to the mat. You have to be willing to fall on the sword and say there are things more important than my prosecution rate. And that if we have a good case, and that's not to say take any tripe case to trial. But this is not a tripe case, this is a case where you have the murder weapon in the man's possession right up to the time he was arrested by the police. There's no interruption in the chain of custody. Let's go for it. Let's prosecute.
Weathersbee: I'm not going to debate the evidence as it exists now, the evidence John thinks he knows. It's an active investigation. There have been many active investigations throughout my term as prosecutor for over 20 years. I remember a . . . homicide case . . . it took eight years before we were able to convict the killer. You get one chance in criminal law, one chance to prosecute, and in a murder case, you want to make it good. Just for the benefit of the media, just for the benefit of the public, it's nice to say, 'Oh, here's a trial. Let's go ahead and try the case.' It's my job to make sure, as best we can, that we can prosecute successfully and that's what we're doing in the Valentine case.
Greiber: I think I said not to prosecute the case, or a tripe case. There is evidence in this particular case, which is the case I was asked about, that dictated to me that I would have prosecuted that case. And I said also that you can wait an appropriate amount of time to develop other evidence in a case. But one of the foundations of civil law and criminal law is a limitations period.
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Mr. Weathersbee, do you think the state's attorney should be bound by term limits?
Weathersbee: Well, I've got to admit I've never thought about that. I don't even have an opinion on term limits for legislators. I think I would answer it this way: My job is being a prosecutor and I started out in 1969 being a prosecutor. I found a very exciting time in the 1970s and ultimately the 1980s to take a relatively small, part-time office to full-time, the largest law firm in Anne Arundel County. It was an exciting time. I think when you talk about term limits you're talking about a purely political position. I don't think prosecuting is a purely political position. It's a position that requires some experience. It requires knowledge of what it is you are doing. And just to say, 'You've been there for a long period of time and we're going to eliminate you for some political reason' I think is incorrect.
Greiber: The term limits in Anne Arundel County is in force because of something I did. I was a proponent of that with the taxpayers' group. I stood out in front of the shopping centers to gather the signatures for it. I will not run beyond two terms. I will run for a second term. I do believe that while it's not a political office . . . it is an elective office and I think a reality check in any elective position is always in order. I think you need to go back and get in touch with people. I think that when you're involved in an office for a period of 30 years that you lose touch with what's occurring around you and that's what all of our politicians these days -- state's attorney, congressmen, anybody you like -- they ,, need to go back and smell the roses. They need to be in touch with the people. Plea bargains, how people feel about them. Eight years is going to be enough for me and that's all I want.
Weathersbee: No rebuttal.
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Mr. Greiber, you have high praise for the county police department, yet you specialize in cases involving people who have sued the police for misconduct. Doesn't this send a conflicting message to citizens?
Greiber: No. And I don't specialize in cases involving police misconduct. . . . I have one, two, three cases right now in the overall portfolio of cases I have. The [Officer Michael] Ziegler case -- there's a perfect example of how to compare how Frank Weathersbee looks at a case and how I look at a case. Let's look at the Ziegler case, a rape case. They pled that case out to police misconduct and the man walked out a free man. I took the case civilly. The issues were identical. The instructions to the jury were based on a Maryland rape case. Consent was Ziegler's defense and rape was what she said. It was brought out in the case that she was a drug addict. It was brought out that she lost her children. We asked for $750,000. And in spite of all this evidence, a jury came back and said it was indeed rape and we're going to give you $300,000 more than you asked for. Weathersbee: The standards are different in civil cases and in criminal cases. Beyond a reasonable doubt is required in a criminal case; by preponderance of the evidence, which is a much lesser standard, in a civil case.
CANDIDATES
FRANK R. WEATHERSBEE (D)
Age: 50.
Home: Crownsville.
Education: Undergraduate degree, University of Maryland, law degree, University of Maryland School of Law.
Work: Joined state's attorney's office in 1969; appointed state's attorney in 1988; won re-election in 1990; chairman, Maryland State's Attorney's Association Legislative Committee; first vice president, Maryland State's Attorney Association; member, State Board of Victim's Services.
JOHN R. GREIBER (R)
Age: 50.
Home: Annapolis.
Education: Prelaw degree, University of Baltimore; law degree, University of Baltimore law school; graduate tax degree, University of Baltimore law school.
Work: Clerk, Baltimore Circuit Court; business and constitutional lawyer; general counsel to the Anne Arundel County Taxpayers Association, Anne Arundel Legislative Delegation for Fair Congressional Redistricting; partner in Annapolis law firm of Council, Baradel, Kosmerl and Nolan.