Longtime Montgomery County thief gets 36.5 years in prison
By: Alan Suderman
Examiner Staff Writer
October 23, 2009
A 44-year-old career criminal who tried to buy a Play Station 3 and a $839 television with a stolen credit card in Montgomery County could be spending the rest of his life in prison.
The Maryland Court of Special Appeals has upheld a sentence of 36.5 years for James Lewis Clark, who the court described as a "lifelong thief and self-confessed heroin addict."
Clark has more than 30 prior criminal convictions and already has spent 27 years in the prison system, court records show.
"This was really excessive," said Sherrie Glasser, an assistant public defender who handled Clark's appeal. "It is in effect a life sentence."
She added that people convicted of violent crimes have been sentenced to much less time.
But Clark's criminal career has left "hundreds" of victims in its wake, and he has a high probability of returning to a life of crime if released, according to Assistant State's Attorney Stephen Chaikin.
"He's been given so many chances," Chaikin said, adding that the sentence sends a strong message to other lifelong thieves in the county.
Police nabbed Clark after he broke into a surgeon's locker at Suburban Hospital's Outpatient Center in Bethesda, took the surgeon's wallet and went to Toys "R" Us in Gaithersburg and bought a Play Station 3 and four video games using a stolen credit card, then tried unsuccessfully to buy a 32-inch television at the Target in Germantown, court records show.
A jury convicted Clark of six counts of identity fraud, theft and attempted theft, and a Montgomery County Circuit Court judge originally sentenced him to 45 years in prison.
The appeals court reduced the sentence by eight and half years because the circuit court had exceeded the maximum penalty on one of the counts. But the appeals court said the lengthy sentence was not "grossly disproportionate" because of Clark's criminal past, which included giving a young woman heroin in exchange for help in stealing computers from office buildings around Maryland, according to court records.
And the court noted that Clark said in court that he has trouble "functioning in society."
"Doing prison time is not [a] problem for me, I don't have a problem in a penitentiary," Clark said. "There's a problem once I get released."
