When Saunders Samuel White was shot on an East Baltimore street corner, John F. Kennedy was president and J. Harold Grady was mayor. But a quirk in the rules has made the recently deceased man the city's 304th homicide victim of 1994.
The shooting on Feb. 17, 1962, left the man with both legs paralyzed. When he died of a blood clot two months ago at the age of 60 in Richmond, a Virginia medical examiner said the bullet caused his demise.
Dr. Kurt Wetzler ruled the death a homicide -- more than three decades after the shooting at the corner of Washington and North Gay streets. Tuesday, police added his name to this year's burgeoning list of slayings. "They said it's a murder, [then] it's a murder," said Col. Ronald L. Daniel, chief of the Criminal Investigation Bureau.
Designating such a death as a killing is unusual, but not unheard of. City police report another case like it this year and, in the past, have seen a couple of time-delayed homicides a year.
In August, Frederick Harris died of complications from a bullet wound he suffered in 1959, when he was 17. He became the city's 251st homicide victim. The suspect, if he is alive, would be 99 years old.
To Mr. White's family, labeling the death a homicide after 32 years, to say the least, is odd. "It is a long time for them to call it a homicide, don't you think?" asked Mr. White's perplexed son, Johnny White.
"I would prefer to leave it alone," the 36-year-old Mr. White said in a telephone interview from his home in Richmond last night. "I don't like it that they are calling it a homicide."
Mr. White said his father, who was 27 when he was shot, believed the shooting was a mistake. As a result, the elder Mr. White failed to attend the suspect's trial in 1968. The charges against the suspect were eventually dismissed.
"He didn't want to pursue it," Mr. White said. "That's all. He was a generous man. He believed it was an accident."
About 1 a.m. on that night 32 years ago, Officers Earl Barnes and Elmer Schutz found Mr. White at the corner of Washington and North Gay streets. He was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he spent months recovering from the spinal injury caused the bullet.
Witnesses to Mr. White's shooting identified a suspect the next day, but police didn't make an arrest until June 1968 when a suspect, Herbert Vernon Blackwell, then 54, was charged with assault by shooting. By that time, authorities could not locate Mr. White and the case was dropped three months later. The suspect's granddaughter said last night that Mr. Blackwell was shot to death more than 20 years ago.
Mr. White had moved to Richmond in 1972, where he used crutches and a wheelchair to get around. He worked in telemarketing for a pharmaceutical firm.
He and his wife, Bernice, had six children and 14 grandchildren. He also is survived by four brothers and two sisters. He divorced his wife after moving to Richmond.
On Oct. 29, he died after suffering a pulmonary embolism, in which a blood clot in his leg traveled to his lungs. Robert Holloway, the administrator of the Virginia medical examiner's office, said the clot was caused by Mr. White's sitting in the wheelchair.
"The whole thing relates back to 1962," Mr. Holloway said. "If he had not have been shot, he would not have been in a wheelchair. If he had not been in the wheelchair, he would not have had this injury."
Baltimore officials would not second-guess the ruling, though Assistant State's Attorney Timothy J. Doory said, "That's a long time to be able to prove that [the shooting] was the actual cause."
Even if Mr. White's alleged assailant had not died, Maryland officials would be hard pressed to prosecute anyone. The state's "year and a day" law states that a death must occur within 366 days of the original injury. It is designed to ensure that suspects are charged only in crimes that directly result from an assault, rather than from prolonged medical problems.
"It is an ancient rule," Mr. Doory said. "Nowadays, medical science has developed beyond that, but we are still operating under this arcane principle."
The Harris case stems from a shooting on Aug. 13, 1959, in which the victim was shot in the back at the corner of East Lombard and Spring streets. Police arrested Henry Mosely, then 64, of the 100 block of S. Spring St. and charged him with assault with intent to murder. The disposition of that case could not be determined. Police suspect that Mr. Mosely is dead.
Mr. Harris died Aug. 22 at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was 52. Dr. David Fowler, who works for the state medical examiner's office, wrote in a letter to police that Mr. Harris died as a result of scar tissue around an inflamed heart, "a direct causal relationship to the gunshot wound," meaning the case "must be ruled a homicide."
In 1992, Michelle Deneen Bennett died from injuries she had received in a shooting eight years earlier, when she was 16. She, like Mr. White, had been paralyzed. And, because of Maryland's law, that case, too, could not be tried as a murder.