Players: Chief Judge Washington, Associate
Judge Thompson, Senior Judge Reid. Opinion by Judge Reid. Jennifer
Wicks for Mr. Mobley. PDS for Mr.
Carpenter. Judith A. Lovelace for Mr.
Thompkins. Trial Judge: Harold L.
Cushenberry, Jr.
Facts: A group of four men opened fire
at someone they were “beefing” with outside a nightclub. Four police officers in four separate marked
police cars happened to be parked outside the club and were “in the line of
fire,” though they were not hit. The
defendants were charged with multiple counts of assault on a police officer
while armed (APOWA) and assault with a dangerous weapon (ADW) with respect to
both their intended target and the officers who happened to be around.
Issue: Although the opinion addresses at least
eight different legal issues, the most significant is the following one: Do the convictions for ADW of two of the
police officers merge with the conviction for ADW of the intended target
because there was insufficient evidence that the defendants knew that the
police officers were there?
Held: No. The ADW convictions do not merge because
there were multiple shots fired and there was enough evidence that the
defendants should have known, based largely on the presence of the four police
cars and their location relative to the club, that the officers were in the
line of fire.
Notes:
·
Despite the many legal issues addressed in the
opinion, the most interesting thing about this case is that the apparent target
of the shooting, Ralph Anwan Glover (pictured above), played Slim Charles in the HBO television
series The Wire.
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