After five hours of late-night deliberation, a Howard Circuit Court jury acquitted a Baltimore man early yesterday of charges of attempted murder in the second of two shootings in September that shocked Harper's Choice Village in Columbia.

Robert Joseph Manning, 18, who has been in custody at the county Detention Center since his arrest in September, was found not guilty at 1: 45 a.m. of five charges, including attempted first- and second-degree murder and first- and second-degree assault.

It was "nobody but the Lord [who] give him another chance," said Shanae Griffiths of Long Reach Village, 16, Manning's girlfriend and the mother of his 13-month-old daughter, who was in the courtroom for the verdict.

Because police did not recover the weapon, a sawed-off shotgun, and because there was no forensic evidence linking Manning to the crime, the case came down to one man's word against another's.

Prosecutor Christine B. Gage of the Howard County state's attorney's office built her case around the testimony of the victim, John Gordon Jackson, 38, formerly of Columbia, an admitted drug user who identified the shooter as Manning.

Manning, an admitted drug dealer, testified that Tavon Donya Sands of Columbia shot Jackson outside the Fall River Terrace apartment complex about 2 a.m. Sept. 21 in retaliation for a shooting 24 hours earlier.

The prosecution did not call Sands to the stand. When called by defense attorney Richard Bernhardt, Sands invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Sgt. Morris Carroll, a police spokesman, had no comment yesterday on whether the department will open a new investigation into the shooting.

The trial of Maurice Green, 21, of the 400 block of Poplar St. in Baltimore on charges of attempted murder in the earlier shooting is scheduled to begin Monday in Circuit Court.

The shootings occurred within 24 hours in a two-block area.

Pub Date: 3/06/99