81% of Trials End with Convictions

By Andrew Michaels - July 19, 2022
Attempted Murder | Court | Daily Stories | Data | Featured | Homicides | Non-Fatal Shooting | Shooting | Suspects | Victims |

Baltimore City Circuit Court has had 79 total trials since July 2021, when trials resumed from being paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly 81 percent ended with verdicts.

According to Baltimore Witness data, the courts had 22 completed trials in 2021, including 18 homicide trials and four non-fatal shooting trials.

Approximately 18.9 percent of total trials were either declared mistrials, dismissed, or placed on the STET docket, where the case may be reopened in the future. The majority of incomplete trials were mistrials, eight of which were homicide cases and three non-fatal shooting cases.

Only three out of the 11 mistrials have been retried and received verdicts since July 2021, including the trials of co-defendants Antwan Newton and Lasheena Stewart.

The pair, who were charged with attempted homicide in the shooting of a 13-year-old girl in 2019, were originally tried in October 2021, but a mistrial was declared after the prosecutor openly spoke of evidence that was not disclosed to defense counsel.

During their retrial earlier this month, Newton was found not guilty and Stewart’s case was dismissed. 

Darrius Lemar Jordan, who was found guilty in the fatal shooting of Guy Thomas, had the fastest turnaround after his mistrial with a retrial starting one day later.

Out of the 50 completed homicide trials since July of 2021, about 66 percent had guilty convictions, while the remaining 34 percent were found not guilty.

The not guilty verdicts outweighed the guilty verdicts 10 to four in the completed non-fatal shooting trials.