A 46-year-old stabbing suspect is set to serve 25 years behind bars for his involvement in the death of his 29-year-old housemate Robert Parker at their shared East Baltimore home nearly four years ago.
On Dec. 9, 2025, jurors convicted Jamal Smith of second-degree murder and acquitted him of deadly weapon usage in connection to what the prosecution called “a brutal stabbing” that left Parker with five stab wounds, two cutting wounds and multiple abrasions to his chest, neck, underarm, shoulder and face. Smith and Parker had both been residents of a home on the 1500 block of E. 28th Street, located in the Coldstream Homestead Montebello neighborhood.
At trial, Smith notably chose to represent himself, denying his right to a public defender. His fiancée was present at his disposition on Jan. 9, and looked on as Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Cynthia H. Jones handed Smith a sentence of 40 years, suspending all but 25, followed by five years of supervised probation — the maximum guideline for second-degree murder.
During trial proceedings, Smith had maintained he was never at the scene of Parker’s death on Jan. 27, 2022. Earlier the day of the attack, officers had responded to a verbal dispute outside the property, during which the prosecution alleged Smith told them, “Y’all gonna be back here tonight.”
Smith denied uttering those words and emphasized numerous investigative failures, including a lack of forensic, eyewitness or weapon evidence linking him to Parker’s death. Officers apprehended him after tracing a blood trail from the 1500 block of E. 28th Street to a shed located on The Alameda, where the defendant was found sitting among mattresses with bloodied hands and clothes.
Neither the blood trail nor Smith’s clothes were analyzed for DNA evidence, the defendant told jurors at trial. He urged jurors to look past the prosecution’s case, which he called rife with circumstantial evidence, and find him not guilty.
Despite his arguments, jurors found Smith guilty within hours of closing arguments.
