She?s one of Baltimore City?s biggest personalities, never afraid to clash with powerful politicians or call out the city?s most dangerous thugs.
A Mississippi native, Patricia Jessamy, 59, has been Baltimore?s state?s attorney for the past 12 years after an eight-year stint as deputy state?s attorney.
She spoke with The Examiner about the state of crime in Baltimore City and the challenges her office faces.
Robert Loney made news last year in a standoff with a city police SWAT team. However, your prosecutors had won a conviction against Loney in 2004, in which he was sentenced to five years in prison without the possibility of parole. Yet he was out on the streets. What happened?
He had been convicted and got what we thought was five years with no parole. We?re hoping to get a bill passed that will address this. Right now, if you are convicted of being in possession illegally of a handgun as a felon ? that?s not considered a crime of violence. As a result, you get more diminution [good time] credits than individuals who are convicted of crimes of violence. That?s in essence what we want to have stopped. We want to have it reduced to five days a month of diminution credits. Now, they?re eligible for up to 20 days a month.
What else should change?
We have two other bills we?re supporting. One asks that individuals who have their guns lost or stolen report that. That?s just common sense. Guns are lethal weapons, and [owning] a gun is a privilege. Another bill has to do with final protective orders: We?ve had a number of situations over the past year where individuals who should be prohibited from possessing a gun would get a long gun [rifle, shotgun] and kill their entire family. A person who has a final protective order should be prohibited from possession of any firearm, whether it?s a regulated or unregulated gun.
Is it true that if I was convicted of murder, I could still ? under state law ? buy a hunting rifle?
It depends. Right now, because we have certain firearms that are regulated, those are the only firearms for a large segment of prohibited persons that they cannot own or possess. But we have all kinds of different statutes and federal laws that conflict with the state laws. The ways the laws are written, they?re all convoluted. We?re trying to close some of those loopholes and gaps.
[Jessamy?s spokeswoman, Margaret Burns: There have been cases where a person is a convicted felon and they?re walking down the street with a long gun, and we?ve had to throw out those charges in state court. You can be a convicted felon and legally possess a shotgun in Maryland.]
You?ve said some bail bondsmen are making a “mockery” of the criminal justice system. What did you mean by that?
What the law requires is, if they write a bail, they [take from the suspect] 10 percent. Now they can take a promissory note for any amount. So say they ask a defendant to pay 1 percent and they take a promissory note for 9 percent. The promissory note may not ever be acted upon. So, an individual who should, according to the law, post 10 percent gets out on 1 percent. That?s not the intent of the law. It?s a circumvention of the law. It?s a total travesty.
You?ve also been critical of the Gang Act of 2007, which was supposed to toughen penalties on gang members. Why?
The gang law passed last year has no teeth. I don?t know of anyone who?s used it.
Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler told me that legislators gave the proposed bill to a group of defense attorneys who gutted it.
That?s a shame that we have defense attorneys writing the laws they want prosecutors to enforce. Gangs are a very serious problem for our community, and we all need to be on the same page. There are no areas of our state that gangs do not permeate.
Your office recently released your annual gun-prosecution statistics, which indicated that judges are undercutting your sentencing recommendations 25 percent less. Why do you think that is?
Now that the courts have been reconfigured, we?re trying more cases. I just saw one of my [gun] prosecutors in the hall this morning and she said, ?Mrs. Jessamy, we?re tired.? We?re also getting better cases from the police. And judges have become aware of what it is we?re attempting to do. We?re trying to let them know what our gun priorities are ? so they undercut us less, because they?re more educated on the subject.
There are still more dropped charges than convictions on gun crimes. What do those statistics tell you?
I?ve never been one who has been in favor of some of these things like CityStat, because it seemed like all you were doing was chasing your tail. People would get there, and they?d be pointing their fingers at each other, talking about who wasn?t doing what. We do GunStat differently. We?re looking behind the numbers. One example is the police?s failure-to-appear rate. There?s some real positive stuff going on with that. We?re not just there looking at the numbers and saying this person wasn?t convicted so it?s your fault. We?re looking at why he wasn?t convicted and what we can do to improve it.
You?ve said you?re also concerned that the police department has pulled two investigators, who help track down witnesses for shooting cases.
Over the last eight or nine months, we haven?t had our witness locators for the FIVE [gun] unit, so we?re hopeful the commissioner will give them back to us. We lost those two officers for a while.
What’s the matter with CityStat or StateStat, programs that numerically track efficiency of government?
Unless you are improving things, then what?s the point? It?s a lot of wasted time and energy. If you?re just going to be looking at numbers and then accusing somebody of having done or not done something, you really haven?t gotten into what?s wrong with the system. So what you have is smoke and mirrors. What?s happening now is real substance.
Do you believe Mayor Sheila Dixon?s approach to crime fighting is better than former Mayor Martin O?Malley?s?
Her approach shows she?s interested in working with problems and not just promoting the appearance of problem solving.
You review each police-involved shooting personally. Have you taken a look at the shooting of Edward Lamont Hunt, who witnesses say was unarmed and shot in the back by an officer?
I haven?t reviewed it yet.
How many times have you taken a case like that to a grand jury?
Just a few times. We had one indictment, and there was a conviction for involuntary manslaughter many years ago. You have to find out if an officer has acted with criminal intent.
Why do you think the homicide rate is going down this year?
We are all communicating now. One of the best things the mayor did when she came in was to stop this zero-tolerance stuff. I don?t think that was doing any useful good to the community. We can?t arrest every citizen in our city and expect to positively impact crime. It has unintended consequences. We can?t be all things to all people. We have limited resources, and that means directing them to the people who make our community unsafe ? the violent repeat offenders. Now we?re more strategic.
