A Westminster man whose burglary conviction was overturned last year when the state's second-highest court found that Carroll prosecutors had resorted to "overkill," pleaded guilty yesterday to the crime.
Joseph Phillip Zemo, 26, pleaded guilty to one count of burglary and was given a five-year prison sentence by Circuit Judge Raymond E. Beck Sr.
Yesterday's conviction had little practical effect on Zemo, who is serving about 11 years in state prison for burglaries in Carroll and Howard counties. Yesterday's conviction was for a 1993 break-in of the Direct to You gasoline station on George Street.
The sentence Judge Beck imposed yesterday will be served simultaneously with the 11-year sentence.
In June, a Carroll jury had found Zemo guilty of breaking into and stealing from the Direct To You station after a daylong trial.
During that trial, an assistant state's attorney allowed a detective to tell the jury that Zemo chose to remain silent when he was arrested by police.
In September, the Court of Special Appeals found that information to be a violation of Zemo's constitutional right to remain silent.
"The taboo reference to the silence here was obviously no inadvertent lapse by a careless witness nor even a gratuitous little bonus tossed in by a more clever witness," Judge Charles E. Moylan wrote. "Adverse comment [nay, all comment] on a defendant's invocation of a right to silence is constitutionally forbidden. . . . "
Such testimony led Judge Moylan to call the case one of "prosecutorial overkill."
The reversal in Zemo's case was the fourth Carroll conviction overturned by the state's second-highest court last year.