U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings has introduced the Witness Security and Protection Act, which would empower the U.S. Marshals Service to protect state witnesses.
Cummings, who represents Baltimore City and Baltimore and Howard counties, said the bill would establish in the U.S. marshals? service a state witness protection program for state and local trials involving homicide or other major violent crimes.
The legislation also would authorize the U.S. attorney general to give grants to eligible prosecutors? offices for the purpose of providing short-term protection to witnesses in trials involving homicide or other serious violent felonies.
“Violent retaliation against witnesses and informers threatens the very fabric of our criminal justice system,” Cummings said in a statement. “Known murders walk the streets every day because we lack the evidence necessary to bring them to justice.”
Baltimore City State?s Attorney Patricia Jessamy said a “conspiracy of silence” thwarts justice for many families who have been victimized by violent crime.
There is a “coordinated effort to silence victims and witnesses to keep them from testifying at court trials across our nation,” Jessamy said. “The effect of these silenced witnesses threatens to undermine our national criminal justice system.”
Cummings said he introduced the legislation in part because of the 2002 killing of the Dawson family in East Baltimore.
On Oct. 16, 2002, Angela and Carnell Dawson and five of their children were burned to death after a drug dealer threw a Molotov cocktail into their East Baltimore home. The family, who had repeatedly battled drug dealing near their Preston Street home, refused to leave the neighborhood.
“Everybody was shocked and saddened by what happened there,” Jessamy said.
Data from the National Institute of Justice says that intimidation of victims and witnesses is a major problem for 51 percent of prosecutors in large jurisdictions and 43 percent of prosecutors in small jurisdictions.
Prosecutors estimate that witness intimidation occurs in nearly all cases of violent crimes committed in some gang-dominated neighborhoods.
The U.S. Marshals Service protect witnesses in federal cases, and for 30 years, not a single witness who followed security procedures was harmed while being protected by the program, Cummings said.
“I know there?s a lot of support nationwide for it,” Jessamy said of the legislation. “When common decent everyday citizens are intimidated, it is a conspiracy of silence. The system does not work when that happens.”
