Saying he was reminded of the most dangerous man he had ever encountered in a courtroom, an Anne Arundel County judge sentenced a 19-year-old Annapolis man yesterday to life in prison for trying to kill another teen-ager.
"I would be frightened for society on the day you are released," Circuit Judge Robert H. Heller Jr. told LoMichael Delvon Booze before sentencing him to life, the maximum term allowed. The judge also ordered Booze to serve a consecutive 20-year term.
Booze has been involved in increasingly violent crimes since his first contact with juvenile authorities when he was about 10, according to the judge and the prosecutor, who had received reports from state probation officials. While awaiting trial and sentencing at the county detention center, Booze committed four serious infractions in recent months, according to jail reports.
In April, Booze was convicted of attempted murder in the shooting of an 18-year-old after a party in Severn in January last year.
Booze was part of a group that jumped another group of teen-agers after a party in Severn, and he twice shot Joshua Blocker, 18, according to testimony at Booze's trial in April. The apparent source of the conflict was that one group was from Annapolis and the other from Severn, according to trial testimony. A jury convicted Booze of attempted murder and three related charges but found him not guilty of murder in the shooting of Alexander D. Henderson, 15, of Severn.
Booze maintained that he had nothing to do with the shootings. One of Booze's friends testified against him in exchange for having charges against him dropped. No one else has been charged in the case.
Heller said that Booze reminded him of Frank Edward Green Jr., who was charged in 1986 with fatally shooting a Maryland Toll Facilities Police officer, wounding three other officers and committing more than a dozen other crimes in Havre de Grace. After the trial was moved to Anne Arundel County, Green was found guilty of the charges, and Heller sentenced him to four consecutive life terms, followed by more than two centuries in prison.
"I am not sure I have met anybody face to face that I have found to be more dangerous," Heller said of Green.
The judge then called Booze a "dangerous predator" and said the defendant came across as so antisocial and hardened that he could not justify meting out a shorter sentence so that Booze might qualify for a prison rehabilitation program aimed at helping young offenders, as his lawyer had sought.
Heller acknowledged that Booze came from a disadvantaged background, but said the teen had not taken advantage of opportunities offered to him.
Booze's attorney, William C. Mulford II, sought a 15-year sentence for his client and consideration for rehabilitation at Patuxent Institution, which provides psychiatric treatment.