Less than a year ago, Shenera Norris told a Baltimore judge that she did not want prosecutors to pursue criminal charges against her boyfriend - a man accused of battering her and threatening to kill her with a butcher knife.
She had even written a letter to the court: "Please let a loving father and a caring man free. He's all I have."
The prosecutor had no other evidence, and the alleged victim wasn't going to cooperate. So last May, the cases against Dale Rodney Jones were suspended. On Feb. 15, police said, Jones stabbed Norris, 31, to death. Still holding the knife after the attack in Norris' apartment building, Jones, 48, was shot to death by a police officer.
City prosecutors say felony domestic violence cases, such as the one filed against Jones last year, are among the most difficult to prosecute - in part because scant, if any, forensic evidence is collected and there's a reliance on vulnerable victims who are likely to change their stories.
That could begin to change next month, with the launch of a pilot project housed at the Clarence Mitchell Courthouse downtown. Starting with felony domestic assaults in Northeast Baltimore, one of the busiest areas for such crimes, domestic violence detectives will handle the investigations. Now, most are investigated by patrol officers.
Nine detectives and a lieutenant will be stationed at the courthouse office, as will crisis counselors who can offer immediate assistance to victims. And video equipment will preserve a victim's statement, conveying to a jury not only an account of what happened, but also the person's state of mind, prosecutors said. The goal is to develop solid cases that can proceed even if the victim does not want to cooperate.
"If this project had been in place, we would have had a much better shot at keeping Shenera safe," said Julie Drake, head of the Baltimore state's attorney's felony family violence unit. "Her boyfriend would have been in jail, and he wouldn't have been in a position to kill her."
Two Baltimore women, Norris and Lisa Holley in January, have been killed this year in what police believe were domestic assaults. Police say there were at least 12 domestic killings among the city's 282 homicides last year. Many times, court records show, the killings followed an escalating pattern of abuse that went unprosecuted.
With Norris standing beside her May 21, prosecutor Gregg Solomon told Circuit Judge John M. Glynn that she was placing the assault cases against Jones on the inactive docket.
"Your honor, it's my understanding that they are going to resume a relationship," Solomon said.
"So that's how you want this to come out?" Glynn asked Norris.
She looked at the judge: "Yes."
Jones and Norris had a daughter together, and in her letter to the court, Norris wrote that she needed Jones to help raise the child.
"Now I have no help with the baby," she wrote. In the six-page handwritten letter, she said she had been "confused" and sick with post-partum depression when she called the police on Jones.
Her injuries, according to police reports, said otherwise.
On Jan. 28, 2007, Jones struck Norris in the face, giving her a bloody lip, charging documents allege.
Two weeks later, Jones pushed his way into Norris' apartment on Valentine's Day, accused her of infidelity and slapped her across the face, charging documents allege. He grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen, pointed it at her and told her he would kill her if she was involved with another man, the report says.
Although Norris said in court that the two had reconciled by May, the relationship continued its violent trajectory, police reports show.
On Jan. 1, Jones broke into Norris' apartment and awoke her by punching her in the face. He then struck her in the back of her head and on the forehead with an unknown object, according to charging documents.
By the time police arrived, Jones was gone. A warrant was issued for his arrest, but that warrant was never served.
Sterling Clifford, a police spokesman, said officers made four attempts to serve the warrant. Of 3,666 domestic violence warrants issued last year, 246 are still open, Clifford said.
Jones returned to Norris' apartment in the 4400 block of Fairview Ave. in Forest Park on Feb. 15.
Neighbors said Jones kicked his way in and chased her out of the apartment and into another one and then a third. In one apartment, he grabbed a knife. He chased Norris down and stabbed her to death, police say.
Jacquelyn Campbell, a nursing professor at the Johns Hopkins University and a domestic violence researcher and victim advocate for 27 years, said many victims have a complex relationship with their abuser.
"All battered women want the violence to end but may want to keep the relationship," she said. "There are a lot of inherent conflicts."
Chief among them, as in the Jones and Norris case, is the reluctance to pursue criminal charges. In addition to building better domestic violence prosecutions, a goal of the pilot project will be to offer more services to victims. Through the courthouse office, they can be connected with shelter services more quickly.
Clifford said the domestic violence pilot project "is an experiment that we will be watching closely. We need to be able to see what the benefits are of putting the resources together."
julie.bykowicz@baltsun.com