Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon yesterday said she regretted asking a top aide to temporarily spring a convicted felon so that he could attend his son's funeral - arguing, in part, that she had not been properly briefed on his lengthy criminal background.
Dixon's chief of staff, Otis Rolley III, made several phone calls late last week in an effort to allow Charles Murel, 20, to attend his 3-year-old son's funeral. Murel is being held in Baltimore's Central Booking and Intake Facility on firearms charges and was convicted two years ago of carjacking.
Despite the effort by the mayor's office, Murel stayed behind bars during the Friday funeral. Charles Murel III was killed June 30 when two cars collided and ricocheted into him in the 1900 block of W. Lanvale St. The boy's mother asked Dixon to get involved.
"Mistakes are going to happen, and we learn from them and we move on," Dixon said yesterday when asked if she regretted the decision to intervene. "In hindsight ... it should have been thought out more."
Murel was convicted in 2005 of carjacking and has been in jail since late that year in a separate handgun case. Charging documents say officers were called to a Safeway grocery store on West Pratt Street after security officers spotted two men with handguns. Murel was arrested nearby with a Glock 9 mm handgun, the documents say.
He is being held on $150,000 bail.
Circuit Judge John M. Glynn held a bail review Thursday for Murel. His defense attorney, Jerome Bivens, asked that he be allowed to attend his son's funeral. But Glynn said Murel's criminal record showed he was too dangerous to be released.
The next day, Rolley called Glynn and asked him to sign paperwork authorizing Murel's temporary release. Glynn again refused.
The state's judicial code of conduct prohibits judges from allowing political connections to influence their decisions. "A judge shall not allow judicial conduct to be improperly influenced or appear to be improperly influenced by a family, political, social, or other relationship or by an employment offer or opportunity," the code reads.
Rolley also approached Central Booking officials about allowing Murel to attend the funeral.
Dixon's office offered to have her executive protection detail work as escorts for Murel, said Benjamin Brown, assistant commissioner for the Maryland Division of Pretrial Detention and Services, which operates Central Booking.
Dixon spokesman Anthony McCarthy denied that the mayor's protection unit was offered. McCarthy said members of the unit were only consulted as to whether it would be appropriate to ask other city police to escort Murel.
Brown said the practice of allowing detainees to attend funerals of close family members was abandoned years ago out of safety concerns and because of the high cost of providing security.
Murel was not permitted to leave because a judge had not authorized it, Brown said.
City officials said the mayor originally called the family to offer her condolences when the boy was killed - something the mayor does often, they said. The boy's mother asked if Dixon could help.
"It's devastating," Dixon said. "I can't even imagine what it would feel like. So when the mother cried out to my office the first thing was, as a mother ... wanting to have her family there."
Dixon said she agreed to intervene but suggested she was not fully informed about Murel's background.
"My staff should have, when I asked the question, given the background information on the individual," Dixon said. "I got very vague information."
julie.bykowicz@baltsun.com john.fritze@baltsun.com