Judge Lynn Stewart has seen murderers, shooters and drug dealers.
But the burglary case she presided over Thursday ? in which Johns Hopkins Hospital cancer patients were endangered ? was a new low.
“No, no one was shot,” Stewart said in Baltimore City Circuit Court.
“No, no one was killed. No, it?s not a boatload of drugs. But, in the court?s opinion, it?s worse.”
Stewart sentenced Greg Wakefield ? a nine-year veteran of the U.S. Navy ? to 12 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to crawling through the vents of the hospital?s Weinberg cancer building twice in 2006 to steal computer network equipment, taking the building?s network down on both occasions.
The hospital suffered a total loss of about $113,000.
“The network system that was stolen is connected to all the rooms that contain cancer patients,” Baltimore police Detective Thomas Jeffries wrote in charging documents.
“The system being down jeopardizes the safety of all the patients.”
Stewart said: “This is life and death. It could have been catastrophic to any patient there.”
No one was hurt in the incidents.
Wakefield, 37, of Baltimore, apologized to the hospital and his family ? and said he committed the crime to tryto fund $550 monthly child support payments he incurred after he went through a divorce.
“It was really selfish,” Wakefield said. “I thought of no one else but myself. I was under a lot of pressure, but that?s no reason for my selfish acts.”
Wakefield has never held a job that pays more than $32,000 a year, said his attorney, Brian Thompson.
Prosecutors recommended a 15 year sentence for Wakefield.
“Fifteen years in a city that has 300 murders is excessive for a nonviolence offense,” Thompson said.
The attorney argued that Wakefield spent most of his life, until the age of 34, being a productive member of a society, including service in the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
“Worse than an uneducated criminal is an educated criminal,” the judge replied.
