A Prosecutor’s Experience
Author: Fran Longwell
I began my legal career in 1979 as a victim witness coordinator for the State’s Attorney’s Office in Prince George’s County, Maryland. I continued my academic studies at the University of Maryland in the evenings while working full time at the State’s Attorney’s Office. I received my bachelors degree and, in 1986, entered the University of Baltimore School of Law. Upon passing the Bar Exam in 1990 I was offered my dream job as an Assistant State’s Attorney by Alexander Williams, State’s Attorney for Prince George’s County.
The District Court Division was my first assignment where I prosecuted misdemeanor cases. In preparing each case for court, I worked closely with the arresting officers and witnesses. Many of these officers were beginning their law enforcement careers as I began my career as a prosecuting attorney. Even though I had 11 years of experience in the court system by the time I became an attorney I had plenty to learn. Law school does not prepare you for the real world of prosecution. However, some of my colleagues believed they “knew everything” and regarded police officers as merely witnesses. They would frequently dismiss cases without explaining to the officer why this was being done. For example, the wrong statute was charged but if the prosecutor doesn’t explain to the officer why they are not proceeding with the case the officer would have no idea what the weakness of the case may have been.
My philosophy was we were to function as a team and learn from each other when mistakes were made. Report writing is taught in the police academy but, like anything else, you learn each time you prepare a report. A detail of the arrest that is left out is prime territory for the defense attorney to question the officer during his cross examination at trial. Even though the officer will usually clarify the omission, the defense attorney will ultimately ask “so now you tell us it was an important fact in arresting my client but you didn’t think it was important enough to put in your report?” Writing a report that includes all relevant facts is a skill that must be learned and perfected through experience. After a trial I would always answer any questions the officer may have about his or her testimony.
Pre-trial preparation is always critical to effective prosecution and must include detailed discussions with the arresting officers as well as all witnesses. I have heard attorneys say that witnesses “got subpoenas to be here so I don’t need to meet with them before trial.” This borders on malpractice. An good prosecutor must speak with all witnesses and not “assume” his or her legal assistant has prepared them for trial.
The prosecutor is also responsible to insure that all discovery materials are provided to the defense. For example, if the legal assistant received information from a witness and failed to inform the prosecutor, this evidence will not be provided to defense counsel and would not be admissible at trial.
Meeting with the witnesses also may lead the prosecutor to conclude that some further investigation needs to be done. For example, there may be other witnesses to contact based upon the interview of the witnesses, photos of the crime scene might need to be taken, or cell phone records might need to be subpoenaed. The State must also provide defense counsel with medical records in the case of any injuries to the victim, any statements that the defendant may have made orally or in writing, video records from cruiser cams, body cams, or other videos of the area of the crime, such as security camera footage from surrounding buildings. Many times the defendant will make a statement in the cruiser during transportation that can be used in trial. We would also go over the questions I would be asking during direct examination as well as questions I believed defense counsel would be asking on cross examination. No witness should be allowed to testify before being made aware of what the attorneys would be asking them.
Once each officer realized that I cared about the case and had done all the work necessary to prepare for trial, we would invariably develop a good working relationship. I once had an officer come up to me in District court, when his case had been transferred into my courtroom at the last minute, and he told me “I just want you to know up front that I don’t like attorneys”. He didn’t know me and hadn’t had any cases with me previously but had obviously had bad experiences with other prosecutors. He was the only witness in the case and we had a detailed discussion regarding the arrest and his expected testimony. The trial the court found the defendant guilty, and we later had many cases together in both District Court and Circuit Court. We developed a great working relationship and remain fast friends today.
I was soon promoted to Circuit Court and assigned to the child abuse/sex offense unit. The cases assigned to me included physical and sexual child abuse, rapes, and homicides of children who died as a result of child abuse. In each case, the assigned Detective would contact me as soon as he got the case so that we could discuss what charges were appropriate under the circumstances. In many of these cases, I would personally go to the crime scene to meet with the detective(s) and the evidence unit, if necessary, any time of the day or night. A good prosecutor should always be willing to visit the crime scene as part of his or her trial preparation.
In the 1990s, I prosecuted a sexual child abuse case involving 3 Catholic priests. These were truly historic cases (to my knowledge, the first such cases in the country), and could never have been successfully prosecuted without the hard work of the dedicated detectives with whom I worked. The first case started with the report of abuse by one young man 20 years after the abuse had taken place. Detectives subsequently located and interviewed numerous additional young men each of whom stated that he too had been abused by one these priests while serving as an altar boy. It took excellent detective work to locate these young men and make each one comfortable enough to speak with us about the abuse he had suffered. Once again, these cases reached successful outcomes not only because of the work I did in preparing the case and presenting the evidence at trial but also because of hard work and dedication of the detectives involved.
I also prosecuted a homicide case that involved a 3-month-old little girl that was originally determined by the medical examiner to be sudden infant death syndrome. The evidence technician who investigated the case at the time of the baby’s death took numerous pictures at the scene including a photo of the baby’s face that showed pressure points on her forehead and nose. However, after the medical examiner issued his report determining the death was sudden infant death the case was closed. The mother and father divorced not long after the baby died. Years later the father remarried and had a little boy. This child also was found dead in his crib and, once again, the medical examiner determined the manner of death was sudden infant death syndrome.
The mother of this child was convinced that her now ex-husband murdered her baby. She knew that his first child died and told her baby’s doctor about that death. They took extra measures to monitor the little boy. One night the baby started to cry and the father jumped up to take care of him. The mom was listening to the baby monitor and heard strange noises. She ran into the nursery and the husband was holding the baby telling her he wasn’t breathing. The second death occurred in Montgomery County and the first death occurred in Prince George’s County. The mother insisted that her husband had killed her child but with the medical examiner’s report the Montgomery County detectives didn’t go any further with the case.
She then contacted Prince George’s County detectives about her son’s death and they reopened their investigation into the death of the first baby. The mother of the first baby really didn’t want to re-open the case because of the pain her daughter’s death had caused her. The detectives started working the case and discovered that the father had obtained a life insurance policy for both infants. The first policy for his daughter was in the amount of about $10,000 and the second policy for the son was approximately $50,000, which is very unusual in the case of a newborn baby. We then had a meeting with the current medical examiner who reviewed the report regarding the baby girl and found that she had more than likely been smothered because of the evidence of swelling in her brain and the photos taken by the initial detective indicating that her face had been forced down into the mattress of her crib. He then issued a new report determining the cause of death to be suffocation and the manner of death to be homicide. The case in Montgomery County went to trial first and he was found guilty, receiving a sentence of life in prison. He then pled guilty to the murder in Prince George’s County and received another life sentence. The defendant is still in prison today. This is another example of the excellent police work and the working relationship between the prosecutors of two counties with the detectives. This case could not have been successfully prosecuted without that cooperation.
My last 19 years of prosecution were in the homicide unit. The cases were assigned via a call list that listed the attorney and detective who would be assigned the case. As soon as a murder was reported the detective would call, no matter what time of day or night. Upon getting the call, I would then go to the scene to give the detective any legal advise he needed. The evidence technicians would take over the scene to recover any evidence and photograph the scene.
In preparation for the trial the detective and I would meet with all the witnesses, go over the evidence, and meet with defense counsel to allow them to inspect the evidence.
In one such case, a young girl driving home from the University of Maryland was stopped at a traffic light on University Boulevard in College Park, Maryland. There was a person on a bicycle between her car and the car to her right. As the light changed and she turned left, the guy of the bicycle fell to the ground. She stopped her car to make sure the biker was okay when he approached her and shot her in the head, killing her instantly. He then returned to his bicycle and rode off. Many civilians followed him and reported the direction he was traveling. Officers responded to the scene and apprehended the biker. They located the gun he had used in a dumpster and his bicycle.
The gun was processed by the firearms unit verifying that it was the murder weapon. It was also important to have the bicycle to show that it was not damaged and that the defendant was able to still ride it. I requested that the detective bring the evidence to my office a couple of days before trial so that we could mark it with court evidence stickers and get it ready to present at trial. The detective told me he had good news and bad news. Fearing that they had destroyed the bicycle by mistake I said give me the good news first. “We have the bicycle”. Great, now what’s the bad news? “They destroyed the gun when it came back from the firearms unit.” Juries need to see the physical gun not just the testimony of the firearms examiner. I went to the firearms unit to discuss this with the examiner. No problem. The unit had a weapon exactly like the one used in the murder in their vault. The examiner testified at trial showing the jury a gun “not the murder weapon but exactly the same type of gun” and explained how he matched the bullet to the gun that he had examined. I also had to have the evidence tech who destroyed the gun testify. I apologized to him before he testified that I had to do this because the jury needed to know how this happened. The defendant was convicted of first degree murder and hung himself in jail after he was sentenced.
In January 2007 Laura Martin, State’s Attorney for Calvert County, Maryland, offered me the position of Deputy State’s Attorney. My responsibilities included training attorneys in the office, administrative tasks and of course trial work. Laura and I would prosecute the major crimes to include child abuse and homicides. We worked closely with the Maryland State Police and the Calvert County Sheriff’s Department to include teaching at the local police academy. We would meet frequently with both departments and attend special task force meetings. After over nine years in Calvert County I retired.
In 2016, I was contacted by the State’s Attorney Angela Alsobrooks in Prince George’s County to work for her training young attorneys. This sounded like a great opportunity to work part time in the office I grew up in professionally. Angela ran successfully for County Executive and Aisha Braveboy won election as State’s Attorney. My assignment under Ms. Braveboy was in the post conviction unit. After a conviction the defendant in a homicide case has an automatic appeal to the Court of Special Appeals. Once the Court of Special Appeals issues their opinion the defendant can file a motion to the Court of Appeals for a further review. If both courts affirm the conviction a post conviction petition can be filed by the defendant claiming his attorney was incompetent. This is rarely successful.
I thoroughly enjoyed my career as a prosecutor, especially working with the outstanding police officers I had the pleasure to work with. I am proud to say that I remain friends with many of the detectives I worked with over my 30 plus years.
Law Enforcement Related Work Experience: Assistant State’s Attorney’s, Prince George’s County, MD State’s Attorney’s Office
