A 24-year-old Glen Burnie resident was acquitted on Dec. 10 of all counts related to a non-fatal shooting incident that occurred last March in Union Square.
Following a two-day trial before Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Kimberly C. McBride, jurors found Daquan Rashard Williams not guilty of firearm possession as a prohibited person, having a handgun on his person, firing a gun in Baltimore City, and illegal possession of ammunition in connection to the incident, which occurred March 19, 2024 on the 1300 block of Hollins Street.
Baltimore police arrested Williams over three months later, on June 23, 2024. Two days after his arrest, Williams requested a speedy trial, and a date was set for Jan. 21. After Williams failed to appear at the very trial he requested, a Baltimore judge signed a warrant for his arrest.
Anne Arundel Police Department officers arrested Williams on April 9, seeking him for a separate offense. In a Dec. 9 defense motion to dismiss charges, attorney Avrohom Greenfield called the delays in Williams’ case “presumptively prejudicial,” having spanned “approximately a year, five months, and sixteen days.”
“Mr. Williams has suffered significant anxiety and concern from the delay,” Greenfield wrote. “The State has stopped Mr. Williams from moving on with his life. He fears losing his girlfriend and home.”
Though the motion was denied and the case proceeded to trial, Williams had echoed previous sentiments in a Sept. 30 handwritten letter to the circuit court that was made publicly available through the Maryland Electronic Courts. In the letter, he pinned his failure to appear at his originally scheduled trial on his struggles with epilepsy, writing that he “had a seizure the night leading to court that morning,” and that such episodes leave him “extremely tired, forgetful, and lacking attentiveness.”
“I’ve wasted a lot of time and I don’t want to waste anymore especially with a child on the way into the world,” Williams wrote. “I’m 24 years old with a lot of life ahead of me and I just want the chance or opportunity to work on just that.”
He went on to write that being incarcerated rendered him unable to support his girlfriend through the majority of her pregnancy, and continued to describe how his time behind bars led him to reflect on his circumstances.
