Three years into his 20-year prison sentence, Henry Allen is set to return to Baltimore City Circuit Court for a retrial in a 2022 victimless shooting after his attempted murder conviction was overturned in July.
The 28-year-old defendant’s successful appeal will see the prosecution retry Allen for attempted first- and second-degree murder, first-degree assault, reckless endangerment and numerous weapons charges. On Oct. 3, Judge LaZette Ringgold-Kirksey ruled Allen will continue to be held without bail despite defense counsel’s request for home detention.
Maureen O’Leary, who represented Allen at trial, also represented her client during the Zoom proceeding. No prosecutor was present for the case.
In July 2023, Allen was found guilty of all nine charges for shooting at an unknown person outside West Carry-Out and Grocery along the 1800 block of Edmondson Avenue on May 31, 2022. Baltimore Police watched the grocery store’s security footage that showed the shooter walking around a corner, take out a handgun and fire several shots at someone across the street, Baltimore Witness previously reported.
Two days later, the detective testified, he saw Allen at the crime scene wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball hat and black satchel over his shoulder that matched the suspect in the footage. Police arrested Allen on June 10, 2022.
During Friday’s bail review, O’Leary said Allen suffered a traumatic experience as a young adult when he was shot more than a dozen times and later developed an opioid addiction. She also noted that jury instructions were behind the appeal.
O’Leary’s argument for Allen’s innocence at trial maintained that the defendant was not at the Harlem Park intersection when the shooting occurred. However, according to an unreported opinion from the Appellate Court of Maryland, presiding Judge Kendra Y. Ausby ruled in favor of the prosecution to inform jurors that a defendant’s decision to flee the scene after committing a crime may be considered as evidence of guilt, but not enough to establish guilt.
Prior to her ruling on the flight instruction, Judge Ausby denied the prosecutor’s request to inform jurors that a person’s presence at the time and place of a crime is not enough to prove that the person committed the crime, but may be used in determining a defendant’s guilt.
O’Leary argued that the presence instruction alluded to the defendant’s presence at the crime scene.
“The flight is just like the presence. It puts the client right there. He was not,” O’Leary said, according to the court opinion. “Flight usually means running away from the police. In this case, the shooter just went about his business, running away, but there was no police presence and I think it’s akin to his presence there.”
O’Leary deemed the instruction “too prejudicial more than it is prohibitive.”
Citing case law from 2021, the appeals court found that the trial judge should not have presented the flight instruction and this error “was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Allen is currently scheduled to appear in reception court on Oct. 10.
