Baltimore prosecutors dropped murder charges Thursday against two men accused of killing a Maryland Shock Trauma Center technician as he waited for a bus downtown in September, saying evidence shows the men were somewhere else at the time.
Defense attorney Russell Neverdon said he presented authorities with a video more than six months ago showing that his client Antwon Morton was in West Baltimore when the shootout occurred Sept. 21. He accused prosecutors of sitting on it while Morton was held in a Western Maryland prison.
The Baltimore state's attorney's office called the accusation "false," saying it needed time to corroborate the evidence.
Morton, 26, and Samuel Rogers, 29, were charged shortly after the killing of Brandon Finney, a 25-year-old hospital employee, who police say was an innocent bystander waiting for the bus home from work. Police say Finney was used as a human shield during a gang shootout in which Christopher Camphor, 20, the intended target, was killed.
In court Thursday, Assistant State's Attorney Elizabeth Stock acknowledged the importance of the video in dropping the double-murder charges against the two men.
"There is evidence that places the defendants at a different location at the time of the homicide," she told Circuit Judge Charles Peters.
While the murder charges were dropped, prosecutors are pursuing charges of witness intimidation against the two men, based on allegations by the witness who said she had seen them commit the shooting. The state's attorney's office declined to comment Thursday, citing the pending case.
Neverdon said "police dropped the ball and now the [state's attorney's office] is still politically posturing."
"Where is the interest of justice?" he asked.
The shooting occurred at the corner of Saratoga and North Paca streets. In charging documents, Detective Damon Talley wrote that police found a witness who said the killing was "directed and conducted by members of the criminal gang known as the Black Guerrilla Family," and was the result of a dispute with Bloods gang members. Camphor, police said, was a member of the Tree Top Piru subset of the Bloods.
According to police, the witness said Morton and Rogers had visited her house and made threats after the shooting.
Morton and Rogers were later arrested near Lexington Market and taken in for questioning. Police said in charging documents that Rogers admitted that he was a "foot soldier" with the BGF who had recently sanctioned a fight with another BGF member. Morton also admitted he was a BGF member, police said. Both denied involvement in the shooting.
The witness had identified the shooter as "Sleepy," which was listed as Morton's nickname in a police database, and picked him out of a photo lineup.
After the two men were charged, Neverdon said Morton's girlfriend insisted that Morton was with her at the time of the shooting. Neverdon told her to try to find video cameras where they had been.
They found such a camera, in the 200 block of S. Calhoun St., which included a time stamp showing Morton there at 11:28 p.m. The shooting occurred about the same time in the 400 block of W. Saratoga St. — a mile and a half away.
Neverdon said he also obtained cellphone video footage said to have been recorded the afternoon before the fatal shooting, which he said shows Camphor involved in a fight. Both participants in the fight were wearing red. Neverdon said the video suggests Bloods members had an internal rift and not a feud with the BGF.
"You're supposed to be homies," someone can be heard yelling in the background of the video, which Neverdon showed to a reporter.
Neverdon said he notified police of Morton's alibi as soon as he saw it. The surveillance system only held footage for five days, and he said he made sure detectives had obtained the video before it expired.
Additional city-owned surveillance footage, which depicts the shooting, shows no female witness at the scene, Neverdon said.
"You never looked at the damn tape," Neverdon said of police. "There's only one woman out there, and she's the nurse who works with" Finney.
"The word on the street was it was BGF versus Blood, and that's what they ran with," Neverdon said.
Rogers is not on the Calhoun Street video, but Morton's presence raised questions about the witness' credibility in identifying Rogers as being at the scene of the shooting, authorities said.
The Police Department said it would not comment on the claims made about detectives' work on the case.
Peters set the witness intimidation case for a trial beginning Friday.
Morton and Rogers repeatedly shook their heads in disbelief as they listened to their attorneys explain the situation to them in court. If convicted on the intimidation charges, the pair could be sentenced to 20 years in prison.
"They're going to prosecute the two of them for intimidating a witness who didn't see anything," Rogers' attorney, Mark Van Bavel, said after the hearing. "It seems to be a political decision."
Finney, a surgical support technician at Shock Trauma, was engaged to be married and had a 15-month-old son. He was saving up to buy his first car. Attempts to reach his family Thursday were unsuccessful.