Attorneys for David Linthicum, 25, asked for the delay so that the court could consider their renewed push to have his case dismissed. In a motion filed Saturday, the defense accused Baltimore County officials of conspiring to prevent him from receiving a fair trial.

Circuit Judge Robert Edward Cahill Jr. said the defense’s argument did not amount to a reasonable legal justification to postpone the case, which is scheduled to begin with jury selection Sept. 16.

“The outcome of this case will get significant community attention. … And the community deserves a trial,” Cahill said.

Authorities say Linthicum shot Baltimore County Police Officer Barry Jordan during a police response to his house Feb. 8, 2023, following a call from Linthicum’s father that his son was suicidal and armed. Linthicum escaped into the woods, triggering a multi-agency search that spanned two days.

Detective Jonathan Chih, also of the Baltimore County Police Department, eventually came across Linthicum on Warren Road. In their latest court filing, defense attorneys wrote that Chih mistook Linthicum for a hitchhiker before Linthicum asked him: “Are you here to kill me?”

Authorities said Chih and Linthicum then opened fire on each other, with the detective being struck and critically wounded.

Linthicum is charged with four counts of attempted first-degree murder, seven counts of assault and a host of firearms offenses, online court records show. Attempted first-degree murder carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

His attorneys, Deborah Katz Levi, director of special litigation for the Office of the Public Defender, and James Dills, district public defender for Baltimore County, contend the police response to their client’s mental crisis was flawed. Their defense of Linthicum at trial will focus in part on officer mishaps that amounted to a “grossly reckless response,” they wrote in their latest motion.

The highly-publicized case has been mired in disputes over evidence sharing, with Levi and Dills repeatedly accusing prosecutors of failing to disclose police files they described as critical to Linthicum’s defense and of bias against their client.

Levi and Dills escalated those claims in their latest motion, alleging the office of Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger conspired with county police to delay an investigation into Chih’s use of force during his encounter with Linthicum. Levi said in court that she believes that decision was intended to prevent Chih from giving a statement that could have been favorable to Linthicum’s defense.

She said the defense had retained two experts and was in the process of retaining a third. If Levi had the chance to call them to the witness stand, the experts would have testified about prosecutorial misconduct, “prosecutors’ ethical obligations more generally and conflicts that arise from their close relationship with the police,” and internal police investigations in Baltimore County, according to the defense motion.

“This needs to get to a judge before trial. … It is everything to Mr. Linthicum’s case,” Levi told Cahill.

Assistant State’s Attorney Zarena Sita described the defense’s latest legal filing as unfounded in court Monday, saying many of the points raised by Linthicum’s attorneys already had been decided by a judge who ruled in the prosecution’s favor.

In addition to a defendant’s right to a speedy trial, prosecutors also have an interest in resolving cases in a timely manner, Sita added.

“There are victims in this case, victims who have a desire to have this case resolved,” Sita told Cahill.

Father Wayland Brown proceeded to masturbate under his “ceremonial robe,” withdraw his hand when he was finished and tell the boy that “God will be very angry” if Schappelle “didn’t accept his holy offering.” So began a course of sexual abuse that lasted months and went on to involve another pedophile priest, according to a lawsuit filed in Montgomery County Circuit Court.

The complaint says the abuse spanned the summer and fall of 1986, yet Schappelle said recently he didn’t begin to remember what happened to him until approximately 2019. By that point, the legal time limit for him to sue the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, which is headquartered in Maryland and has parishes in five counties, had expired.

“It was so traumatic that basically my brain just shut it out,” Schappelle told reporters Thursday at a news conference hosted by his lawyers.

Schappelle’s break came Oct. 1, when Maryland’s Child Victims Act took effect. The law erased time limits for those sexually abused as children to sue their abusers and the institutions that enabled their torment, but now that law — and Schappelle’s lawsuit — hang in the balance because of legal challenges from the Washington diocese and others sued under the act.

The Supreme Court of Maryland is slated to hear arguments Tuesday about the constitutionality of the nascent child victims law and, within roughly a year, determine whether it’s legal.

Much of the highly technical debate in court will focus on a 2017 law that preceded that Child Victims Act and whether the Maryland General Assembly included a provision in that law granting defendants, such as the Washington diocese, permanent immunity from child sex abuse lawsuits after a survivor turns 38 years old.

But beyond the courtroom, there are broader implications for survivors, who recent research estimates mostly come forward when they are between 40 and 50. In the Child Victims Act, survivors and their advocates say, there was finally a law that acknowledged that timeline.

“If we say the Child Victims Act is unconstitutional, it tells those predators and pedophiles that it’s OK, time will expire and everything will be fine. If you can just get through that time where the child turns 38, then you’re fine. You’re free,” Schappelle said. “Well … we need to hold our society to a better standard. We don’t just forget things that happen.”

“I mean,” he continued, “the truth has to happen. Whether it takes five years, 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, the truth needs to come out. It will come out. That’s what the Child Victims Act is about.”

‘Time for accountability’

David Lorenz, Maryland director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, remembers working to pass legislation resembling the Child Victims Act as early as 2004.

Over those almost two decades since, he said, survivors’ advocates rallied against some stubborn lawmakers and a strong — and well-funded — push against the legislation by the Maryland Catholic Conference, the church’s lobbying arm in the state.

At news conferences Wednesday and Thursday, Lorenz credited the release in April 2023 of a state attorney general report documenting the abuse of more than 600 children by 156 clergy and other officials employed by the Archdiocese of Baltimore with propelling lawmakers to enact the child victims bill.

“That report came out and it was a total inversion of how the legislators looked at us,” Lorenz recalled. “We’d walk in there and say, ‘We’re here to support the Child Victims Act,’ and they’d say, ‘Oh yeah, we’re right behind you.’ It was unbelievable.”

Democratic Gov. Wes Moore signed the bill into law April 12, 2023, and a deluge of lawsuits flooded Maryland courts when it took effect in October. The complaints targeted the likes of churches, schools, youth correctional facilities and other institutions, with people alleging abuse by priests, teachers, guards and others in positions of authority over children.

The Baltimore diocese, America’s oldest, declared bankruptcy two days before the child victims law took effect. For survivors of abuse in that branch of the Catholic church, that meant repurposing lawsuits in state court into proof-of-claim forms filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Baltimore. In that case, the church is in mediation with a committee of abuse survivors.

Because of questions raised during the Child Victims Act’s passage, state lawmakers included a provision allowing for a mid-lawsuit appeal on constitutional grounds to the state supreme court. Almost as quickly as complaints hit court dockets, defendants such as the Washington diocese, Harford County Board of Education and Key School in Annapolis challenged the law as unconstitutional.

Circuit Court judges in Prince George’s and Harford counties ruled that the law was constitutional, leading to swift appeals. The Montgomery County Circuit Court judge presiding over Schappelle’s lawsuit deemed the law unconstitutional, siding with the Washington diocese.

Schappelle appealed that ruling, but his case is not before the Supreme Court. The high court is considering appeals arising from lawsuits against the Washington diocese in Prince George’s and the education board in Harford County, as well as a question from a U.S. District Court judge presiding over a sex abuse lawsuit against the Key School.

Robert K. Jenner, an attorney for Schappelle and another plaintiff whose case is before the Supreme Court, foreshadowed Tuesday’s oral arguments at the SNAP news conference with his client.

“This is thick. This is heavy. This is a constitutional analysis going back decades. The arguments will be long, they will be involved, but they will be important,” Jenner said. “But we know this: It is time for change. It is time for justice. It is time for accountability.”

Debate centers on 2017 law

The constitutional debate over the Child Victims Act centers on the law that preceded it.

Defendants in the cases before the Supreme Court argue that the 2017 law that expanded time limits for victims to file suit granted them permanent protection from civil claims after a victim turned 38. The provision in the law that granted them immunity, they argue, is called a statute of repose and gave them a “vested right” against liability in sex abuse lawsuits.

They contend that lawmakers can’t change a statute of repose.

Their argument garnered support from a group of organizations representing businesses, insurance companies and civil defense attorneys in Maryland, who filed a brief with the state Supreme Court arguing that the law was unconstitutional. They say limiting the time for filing lawsuits is fair because witnesses’ memories fade and evidence is lost with time.

“The heavy cost of defending against or paying these decades-old claims will not fall upon the perpetrators of these crimes, but will be borne mainly by schools, nonprofit organizations, and other entities that provided services to children, impacting those they serve today,” the group wrote.

On the other side of the debate, plaintiff’s lawyers argue the 2017 law did not include a statute of repose but a statute of limitations, which the legislature can change or get rid of anytime.

The only other statute of repose in Maryland law can be found in the construction industry, according to legal scholars. In that context, it protects the likes of architects and builders from liability related to injuries sustained in the structures they designed or built after a certain amount of time passes.

Under that statute of repose, the clock for lawsuits starts ticking when the building is deemed operational. By contrast, a statute of limitations starts counting the period a person has to file a lawsuit from the time they sustain an injury.

Even if the Supreme Court finds the 2017 law is a statute of repose, plaintiffs lawyers argue, the legislature has the power to change it. They pointed out that the General Assembly did just that in the 1990s when it allowed people to file retroactive lawsuits against builders who created structures with asbestos.

Several organizations that represent abuse survivors, children’s rights and crime victims have backed up the plaintiffs’ arguments in legal briefs filed with the high court. So too did Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, who long ago pledged to defend the Child Victims Act, and several of the lawmakers behind the 2023 law and its 2017 precursor.

“The General Assembly did not intend to eliminate their power to allow the filing of certain time-barred claims for child sexual abuse,” read the brief filed for the lawmakers. “It is clear and unequivocal that in 2023, the Maryland General Assembly used that power to give all living survivors of child sexual abuse the opportunity to file a lawsuit against an organization responsible for the abuse, regardless of when the sexual violence occurred.”

Steven J. Kelly, an attorney for some of the plaintiffs, said having the lawmakers behind both laws submit a brief explaining their reasoning was critical because the Supreme Court justices will do an analysis of the “legislative history” of the act, which involves looking at debate in the legislature at the time the bills were being discussed and different drafts of the legislation.

“Having the legislators, the people who were actually there, who worked on the legislation, talk about that record is really powerful, and we’re hopeful it will be convincing to the justices,” Kelly said at the news conference with Jenner, Schappelle and Lorenz.

‘This is my time’

The Washington diocese knew “or should have been aware” that Brown, the priest who allegedly abused Schappelle, had a history of “predatory behavior” dating to more than a decade before he encountered Schappelle, according to the lawsuit.

Before he was ordained in 1977, Brown was a religious teacher at a church in Savannah, Georgia. The complaint says an administrator of that church once wrote that Brown “was developing a coterie of young boys around him.”

Brown became a seminarian at St. Rose of Lima after teaching in Georgia, according to Schappelle’s lawsuit. He allegedly sexually abused two boys who were parishioners there. The Catholic Church ordained him nonetheless.

Georgia law enforcement in 1986 launched an inquiry into Brown’s “behavior with male children,” prompting the bishop of the Savannah diocese to confront him. Schappelle’s complaint says he admitted to sexually abusing young boys.

The bishop subsequently sent him for “evaluation” and “treatment” at Saint Luke Institute in Silver Spring, the suit says. While he was at Saint Luke, he taught religious classes at St. Rose of Lima. That’s where he came across Schappelle, abused him and permanently altered his life.

Brown died in 2019 after being convicted in South Carolina of sexual assaulting two boys and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The Archdiocese of Washington declined to comment.

The complaint says the abuse “shattered” Schappelle’s faith, despite his being raised Catholic, left him with mental anguish and physical sickness.

Schappelle said the Child Victims Act gives voices to people who were abused as children, grew up and realized what happened to them. It gives him recourse.

“I didn’t have that as a child,” he said. “This is my time. This is what it means to me.”

Members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, told reporters at a news conference that they hoped the Maryland Office of the Attorney General would release a report soon on child sexual abuse committed within the Archdiocese of Washington and the Diocese of Wilmington, both of which operate in several Maryland counties.

David Lorenz, Maryland director of SNAP, said he hoped the attorney general’s report on the abuse in those outposts of the Catholic Church would resemble the report that office released on abuse within the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Released last April, that document spanned more than 400 pages, detailing the abuse of more than 600 children by 156 clergy and others in the church, dating to the 1940s and including Baltimore and the nine other counties the diocese serves.

After releasing the report on abuse within the Baltimore diocese, Democratic Attorney General Anthony Brown pledged his office would continue to investigate clergy abuse in other Catholic dioceses that operate in Maryland. Headquartered in Hyattsville, the Archdiocese of Washington has parishes in five Maryland counties: Calvert, Charles, Montgomery, Prince George’s and St. Mary’s. The Diocese of Wilmington serves Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

“The OAG was given an infusion of funds to complete the investigation into the misdeeds of the Catholic Church in both of those dioceses,” Lorenz said. “They have staffed up and are performing their job well. Nevertheless, we want to urge them to complete this work as quickly as possible, but yet thoroughly.”

“It cannot be understated,” Lorenz added later, “the impact this report will have on survivors that have lived with guilt and shame for all of their lives, for decades, they’ve carried this burden around for a long, long time. When we finally get this report out, victims can finally release that burden of shame and guilt onto the place it belongs, onto the predator.”

Jennifer Donelan, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, said in a statement that investigators want survivors to come forward by contacting the office’s abuse hotline at 410-576-6312.

“We continue to receive information from survivors about allegations of child abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore — including information received after our office released the Report on Child Sexual Abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore in April 2023 — and we continue to investigate sexual abuse associated with the Archdiocese of Washington DC and the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware,” Donelan said.

Archdiocese of Washington spokeswoman Paula Gwynn Grant said in a statement that the church has cooperated with the attorney general’s investigation.

“In addition, the Archdiocese remains fully committed to maintaining our robust safe environment program, which has been in place for decades, and our longstanding efforts to bring healing to survivors of sexual abuse within the Church,” Grant said.

Robert G. Krebs, a spokesman for the Wilmington diocese, noted that the church there paid $77 million to sex abuse survivors to settle its 2009 bankruptcy case and said it is “committed to full cooperation” with law enforcement investigations.

“The Diocese has cooperated fully with the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, and several years ago, turned over to the Office all documents regarding clergy abuse in Maryland,” Krebs said.

“Unless you’ve experienced it, it’s almost impossible to bring voice to the feeling someone gets when their predator’s name is put on a piece of paper and they see it, and it says ‘I was right,’” Lorenz said. “Even if they’ve never told anybody, they’ve been telling themselves for 20, 30, 40 years, ‘Did this really happen? Did this really happen?’ And the sense of validation you get to see that name in print saying, yes ‘he was what I thought he was,’ you can’t describe it.”

It brought David Schappelle, an abuse survivor who is suing the Washington diocese in Montgomery County Circuit Court, “a weird sense of joy and delight” to see one of his abusers named in the attorney general’s report on the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

“Everybody’s going to have their own reaction, but for me it was a little bit of a sense of relief and a sense of, ‘Aha, let’s tell this story,’” Schappelle said.

The Baltimore Sun does not typically identify victims of sexual abuse without their consent. Schappelle said it was OK to include his name.

Schappelle filed the lawsuit after Maryland lawmakers passed the Child Victims Act, which erased time limits for people sexually abused as children to sue their abusers and the institutions that enabled their torment, on the back of the release of the attorney general’s report on abuse in the Baltimore diocese.

A Montgomery County Circuit Judge ruled the law was unconstitutional when the Archdiocese of Washington challenged Schappelle’s lawsuit, but the fate of the Child Victims Act rests in hands of the Supreme Court of Maryland, which is handling several appeals about that law’s constitutionality. Oral arguments are scheduled for Tuesday, and the abuse survivors who urged expediency from the attorney general Wednesday also defended the child victims law.

Schappelle’s lawsuit alleges he was repeatedly sexually abused when he was a boy by two priests at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Gaithersburg.

A report on abuse like his in the Washington diocese, Schappelle told reporters, would represent the “truth” being exposed.

“That is why we’re all here,” Schappelle said, “so that the truth will come out.”

Almost two years ago, the office of then-Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby moved to throw-out Syed’s convictions stemming from the 1999 killing of Hae Min Lee, who was strangled to death and buried in a shallow grave in Leakin Park.

Lee’s brother, Young Lee, spoke at the Sept. 20, 2022, hearing by video conference from his home in California but argued in appeals that he should’ve been given more notice of the hastily-scheduled proceeding, and been allowed to attend and address the judge in person. In its long anticipated ruling Friday, the state Supreme Court agreed with him in a split, 4-3 opinion.

“On remand, the parties and Mr. Lee will begin where they were immediately after the State’s Attorney filed the motion to vacate,” read the majority opinion.

Ivan Bates was sworn in as Baltimore City state’s attorney on Jan. 3, 2023, before the intermediate Appellate Court of Maryland even ruled in Young Lee’s favor, leading to dueling appeals to the Supreme Court from both Syed and Lee that culminated in Friday’s opinion.

Bates, a Democrat like Mosby, doesn’t have to follow his predecessor’s decision to pursue a motion to vacate Syed’s convictions.

“They could withdraw it if they wanted to. The ball is in Ivan Bates’ court,” attorney Andrew I. Alperstein told The Baltimore Sun. “The question is, is that office going to do an independent review of what the previous administration did? Or are they going to stand by that work?”

Alperstein noted that Bates questioned the integrity of Syed’s convictions on the campaign trail and argued they should be thrown out, with Syed freed.

Bates’ office said Friday it needed time to review the Supreme Court’s lengthy opinion and to determine whether his office has a conflict of interest in the case. If there is a conflict, Bates could ask another state’s attorney’s office to handle it.

James Bentley, a spokesperson for Bates, said the office would “continue to thoroughly review the matter” until the Circuit Court regains jurisdiction over the case.

“The opinion was issued on August 30th, and the Supreme Court will issue a mandate in approximately 30 days,” Bates said. “Until the mandate is issued, jurisdiction remains with the Supreme Court. Once the mandate is issued, jurisdiction is re-invested with the Circuit Court.”

Alperstein credited Bates with “being cautious and [saying], ‘I want to take a deep look at it.'”

“Bates as a candidate doesn’t have the detailed knowledge of the file that he has as a prosecutor,” Alperstein said.

Syed’s attorney, Erica Suter, said in a statement Tuesday that the high court “has sent the case back to the district court to meet the procedural requirements for a new hearing on vacating Adnan’s conviction.”

“We appreciate the tremendous amount of support we have received over the past few days,” Suter continued. “We will move forward in this process to ensure Adnan is exonerated and his continued freedom secured.”

Assuming Bates maintains the position he expressed campaigning, there would be another hearing on the motion to throw out Syed’s convictions in Baltimore Circuit Court.

In its opinion, the Supreme Court ordered that a judge other than Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn, who handled the hearing originally, preside over the “proceedings on the Vacatur Motion to avoid the appearance that allowing Mr. Lee and/or his attorney to speak to the evidence at a new vacatur hearing may be a formality.”

In 2021, Syed’s attorney approached Mosby’s office asking it to review his case in light of a new law allowing people convicted of crimes before they turned 18 to petition a court to reconsider their penalty. That spawned an almost year-long reinvestigation of Syed’s case, Mosby’s office said, revealing alternative suspects in Lee’s killing not before disclosed to Syed.

Mosby’s office said it lost faith in the integrity of Syed’s 2000 conviction on murder, kidnapping and robbery charges, and moved to throw out the guilty findings and resulting life sentence.

A timeline of Adnan Syed’s journey through Baltimore’s criminal justice system

On a Friday afternoon in September 2022, the presiding judge scheduled the vacatur proceeding for the following Monday. Prosecutors then informed Young Lee that he could “watch” the hearing by Zoom. Over the weekend, Young Lee retained a lawyer, who attended the hearing Monday and asked for a one-week postponement to allow his client to arrange travel from the West Coast.

Phinn denied the postponement request, allowing a short delay to allow Young Lee to speak remotely. Over Zoom, he said he felt betrayed by prosecutors’ decision to throw out Syed’s convictions and release the person they’d led him to believe for decades killed his sister.

“This is not a podcast for me. This is real life,” Young Lee told Phinn.

After Young Lee spoke, the judge heard from the prosecutor who was handling Syed’s case, who has since left the state’s attorney’s office, and Syed’s lawyer, Erica Suter. Phinn then threw out the convictions, allowing Syed to walk free — albeit with a GPS ankle monitor — after 23 years behind bars.

Young Lee quickly gave notice he intended to appeal based on the argument that his rights as a crime victim representative were violated. But the vacatur law says prosecutors have 30 days from the time a conviction is thrown out to schedule a new trial or dismiss the charges, and Mosby’s office dropped Syed’s charges Oct. 12, 2022.

If Syed has a new vacatur hearing, Maryland’s Supreme Court said, Young Lee should be allowed to speak after the attorneys present evidence supporting throwing out the convictions.

“The victim’s right to be heard at a vacatur hearing includes the right to address the merits of the vacatur motion after the prosecutor and the defense have made their presentations in support of the motion,” the majority opinion read. “After hearing the evidence adduced at the hearing, if the victim believes the State has not met its burden of proof under … the victim must have the right to explain why the victim believes that to be the case and to ask the court to deny the motion.”

The three justices who dissented either said they believed Young Lee’s appeal was nullified when prosecutors dismissed Syed’s charges or that they disagreed with the majority’s interpretation of the state’s victims rights laws, going as far as to say that the high court’s ruling was creating rights the Maryland General Assembly never intended to give victims.

The high court’s ruling stopped short of allowing a victim to call witnesses or present evidence, as Young Lee had requested on appeal.

Despite reinstating Syed’s guilty findings, the state Supreme Court ruled that he should remain free from custody while his case plays out.

Alperstein predicted that Bates would proceed with vacating Syed’s convictions and dropping the charges.

“I think it’d be pretty hard to tell this guy he’s got to go back to jail,” Alperstein said. “So if I were to guess, I’d guess he’d do what the prior administration did, based on what he said on the campaign trail. But you never know — it’s not done until it’s done.”

The order essentially restarts the process after the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office filed a motion to vacate Syed’s conviction for the 1999 killing of Hae Min Lee, who was strangled to death and buried in a clandestine grave in Baltimore’s Leakin Park. The court said the initial hearing violated her brother Young Lee’s right as a crime victim’s representative to participate.

The court’s 4-3 ruling does not require Syed, who was freed nearly two years ago, to be incarcerated again while the case resumes.

“On remand, the parties and Mr. Lee will begin where they were immediately after the State’s Attorney filed the motion to vacate,” the court wrote in an opinion published online Friday morning.

The Supreme Court justices said Lee should have been given more notice of the hearing that freed Syed, been able to attend in person and been given the chance to speak about the legal issues and fairness of the state’s motion to throw out his conviction. However, they disagreed that Lee or his attorney had the right to call witnesses or present evidence, as he had argued.

The court’s ruling significantly broadens the ability of crime victims and their families to participate in hearings for criminal cases, according to legal observers.

“This is a massive expansion of the role that victims play in the legal system,” said David Jaros, a law professor at University of Baltimore.

Syed’s attorney Erica J. Suter said in a statement Friday that his legal team disagreed with the court’s ruling but will keep working to exonerate him.

“Adnan is innocent,” Suter said. “This appeal was about the process for the vacatur, it did not challenge the substance of the vacatur — that there was a Brady violation, that the other evidence supporting his conviction has been debunked, and that subsequent DNA testing excluded Adnan.”

Evidence that supports a defendant’s innocence is known as Brady material, and prosecutors are required to disclose any such information to the defense.

Suter acknowledged the Lee family’s suffering but said reinstating Syed’s “wrongful conviction” would not give them closure.

David Sanford, Lee’s attorney, said in a separate statement that the court’s decision affirmed crime victims’ rights “to be treated with dignity, respect and sensitivity.”

“The Supreme Court acknowledges what Hae Min Lee’s family has argued: crime victims have a right to be heard in court,” Sanford said.

Hae Min Lee, Woodlawn High School Class of 1999

He said the Lee family will now get the chance to address “the merits” of prosecutors’ motion to vacate Syed’s convictions, adding that the public has not yet seen compelling evidence that supports throwing out the case.

“If there is compelling evidence to support vacating the conviction of Adnan Syed, we will be the first to agree,” Sanford said. “To date, the public has not seen evidence which would warrant overturning a murder conviction that has withstood appeals for over two decades.”

The new hearing would take place under the administration of a different state’s attorney, Ivan Bates, and be handled by a new prosecutor after Becky Feldman’s departure from the office. Bates, who took office in January, said while campaigning that he believed Syed’s conviction was flawed and he should be freed.

“We need some time to figure out what’s going on with this 185-page opinion,” Bates told reporters Friday.

The decision comes nearly 11 months after state Supreme Court justices questioned lawyers for Syed and Lee at oral argument Oct. 6.

A timeline of Adnan Syed’s journey through Baltimore’s criminal justice system

Syed’s legal saga rose to international renown with the hit podcast, “Serial,” which debuted in 2014. The show examined Hae Min Lee’s killing as well as the subsequent prosecution of Syed, her former high school sweetheart.

A jury in 2000 found Syed guilty of murder and related charges in Lee’s death, with a judge later sentencing Syed to life plus 30 years in prison. The convictions withstood numerous appeals from Syed, who maintained his innocence as years turned to decades behind bars.

His break came in 2021, when Baltimore prosecutors began reviewing his case in consideration of a new law allowing people convicted of crimes before they turned 18 to petition a court to reconsider their penalty. The review spawned a full-throttled reinvestigation of the case, which, prosecutors said, revealed alternative suspects in Lee’s killing not before disclosed to Syed.

The revelation led prosecutors to lose faith in the “integrity” of his decades-old conviction. They moved to vacate the guilty findings.

On a Friday afternoon in September 2022, the presiding judge scheduled the vacatur proceeding for the following Monday. Prosecutors then informed Hae Min Lee’s brother, Young Lee, saying he could watch the hearing by Zoom, but a lawyer for Young Lee insisted his client, who lived in California, wanted to attend in-person and wasn’t given enough time to travel.

The hearing happened anyway and Syed walked free after 23 years behind bars.

Questions, however, continued about that hearing and Young Lee’s role in it. Though he was allowed to speak at the hearing by Zoom, Young Lee filed an appeal before prosecutors dismissed Syed’s charges in October of that year, arguing the short notice violated his rights as a crime victim. The intermediate Appellate Court of Maryland sided with Lee, ordering in March 2023 that Syed’s convictions be reinstated for a do-over of the hearing to vacate them.

Syed promptly appealed to the state Supreme Court, which held off on reinstating his charges while it considered whether to take up his case, and Young Lee followed suit, arguing the appeals court’s ruling didn’t go far enough for crime victims. Last June, the Supreme Court accepted and combined the dueling appeals from Syed and Lee.

Three justices dissented from the majority’s opinion on Friday.

Calling the case a “procedural zombie,” now-retired Justice Michele D. Hotten wrote that Lee had no right to appeal because prosecutors had dismissed Syed’s charges. Hotten also disagreed with the majority’s interpretation of crime victims’ rights.

Justice Brynja McDivitt Booth wrote in another dissenting opinion that the majority’s ruling could have implications for the separation of powers, by creating a right for victims to be heard that doesn’t exist in state law.

“The Majority also re-writes the victims’ rights statutes to provide a right where the Legislature has declined to provide one. Respectfully, it is not our role to act as a super legislature when we think our policies are better,” she wrote.

Jaros, faculty director of the University of Baltimore School of Law’s Center for Criminal Justice Reform, agreed that the majority’s expansion of crime victims’ role went beyond what legislators intended.

Calling the decision “rather shocking,” Jaros said the court is introducing a “third voice” into the criminal process by allowing victims and their attorneys to give their perspectives on legal issues such as whether a constitutional right was violated, rather than simply talking about the crime’s impact on them.

“Not only do I think that’s a radical change, I don’t think that’s a change that was envisioned by the General Assembly,” Jaros said.

It’s unclear whether a re-do of the 2022 hearing with new prosecutors will produce a different outcome for Syed. But broadening victims’ role in these proceedings, as the ruling does, creates another hurdle in attempts to revisit potentially flawed convictions, Jaros said.

The Supreme Court of Maryland took up the two cases after separate Baltimore Circuit Court judges found that each question should not appear on ballots for city voters to consider this fall. Each judge ruled that their respective question was outside the scope of changes that citizens are able to make to the city’s charter.

The high court concurred, finding that the questions impeded upon powers set aside for legislative bodies, like the Baltimore City Council.

In Baltimore, citizens have the right to petition to place a question on the ballot by collecting 10,000 signatures from qualified city voters. Past court decisions have found that those ballot questions must be proper charter material — amendments that change the form of city government rather than set policy.

The court heard arguments Wednesday from both Renew Baltimore, the group backing the tax proposal, and the Maryland Child Alliance, which sponsored the proposed payments for parents, better known as the Baby Bonus. The ruling came on an expedited schedule because of the upcoming election. The Maryland State Board of Elections is due to begin printing ballots on Sept. 6.

Renew Baltimore, a coalition of economists and former city officials, collected more than 23,000 signatures in support of its proposal, which would have nearly halved the city’s property tax rate over seven years, from 2.248% to 1.2%. The Baltimore City Board of Elections notified the group in July that the measure would be stricken from the ballot, arguing that only the mayor and City Council have the power to set the property tax rate.

Circuit Judge Althea M. Handy sided with the board, finding that the ballot question “would take all power and discretion from the City Council and their ability to legislate and determine the tax rate.”

Attorneys for Renew Baltimore argued the proposal is legal because courts have determined that residents can place reasonable limitations on their government’s power to tax by way of charter amendments. The group postulates the tax break would boost the city’s population, thus increasing the number of taxpayers and making up for a projected multimillion-dollar reduction in city revenue.

Justices expressed concern that the cap would act as an effective tax reduction that would hamstring the city’s ability to meet budgetary needs.

In fiscal year 2023, Baltimore brought in roughly $3.6 billion of revenue, almost 30% of which — about $1 billion — came from the property tax, according to the city’s annual audited report. Renew Baltimore’s critics argue its proposal would cut city revenue by one-quarter and require dramatically slashing city services.

A 1990 appellate decision at the center of the election board’s argument distinguished between voters placing a cap on a legislature’s ability to set a tax rate and rolling back the tax rate. In that case, appeals judges determined that a charter amendment could be used to set a cap, but not to roll back the rate, according to court filings.

In its order Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled the proposed ballot measure violates a provision of Maryland property tax law that says it’s solely the duty of a county’s “governing body” to set a property tax rate each year. The high court upheld an Aug. 9 ruling by Baltimore Circuit Judge Althea M. Handy.

“The circuit court correctly determined that the proposed charter amendment impermissibly sets the property tax rate … and, therefore, cannot be presented on the November 2024 general election ballot,” read the order, signed by Chief Justice Matthew J. Fader.

The ruling marked the end of the road for Renew Baltimore, which tried once before in 2022 to place the tax cut question on the ballot, but gathered too few signatures.

Leaders of Renew Baltimore decried the court’s ruling in a statement, calling on Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, a Democrat, and the City Council to reduce the city’s property tax rate.

“We are deeply disappointed in today’s ruling by the members of the Maryland Supreme Court, which denies the will of 23,542 Baltimore City residents who signed a petition to at last bring about fair and equitable property taxes,” wrote Ben Frederick and Matthew Wyskiel. “It is unfortunate that the Court decided to ignore the demands of the tens of thousands of residents who have called for responsible property tax reform, denying them the opportunity to control their financial future and improve the prospects of the City they love.”

In a statement, Scott’s office called Renew Baltimore’s proposal “illegal and downright terrible policy.”

“We’re glad the Supreme Court saw through their inaccurate spin, fuzzy math, and weak legal arguments,” the mayor’s office said. “Today’s decision ensures that the City can move forward without the threat of bankruptcy that would disrupt essential city services, and we can continue about the business of pursuing property tax relief in a responsible way.”

Courtney Jenkins, President, Metropolitan Baltimore Council Of AFL-CIO Unions, applauded the Supreme Court’s ruling in a statement Thursday, arguing that Renew Baltimore sought to “subvert the democratic process” to benefit the wealthy.

“City leaders, workers, and everyday Baltimoreans know that halving city property taxes would have decimated city services and made Baltimore a less healthy community where basic human needs would be left unmet due to a lack of funding,” said Jenkins, on behalf of the group Baltimore City Not For Sale Coalition, which represented community groups, city workers, teachers and residents in opposition to the ballot measure.

Judges also heard arguments for and against the Baby Bonus which would have paid city parents $1,000 upon the arrival of a new child. The question, sponsored by a coalition of city teachers, was intended to alleviate childhood poverty.

In the case of the Baby Bonus, it was the city that sued to have the question removed from the ballot, arguing that it exceeds the authority of citizens. The Baltimore City Board of Elections had previously approved the question to appear on ballots. Baltimore Circuit Judge John Stanley Nugent sided with the city earlier this month, granting an injunction.

Attorneys for the Maryland Child Alliance and the Baltimore City Board of Elections, which is a party to the case, argued that the city would maintain discretion to make decisions about how to implement the Baby Bonus. Legislators would still have the power to decide how the payments would be distributed and whether adoptive parents would be included.

The state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the proposed Baby Bonus ballot measure violated an article of the state constitution that gives county legislative bodies “law-making power.” The high court’s order affirmed Nugent’s Aug. 9 ruling.

“The circuit court correctly determined that the Baby Bonus Amendment violates … the Constitution of Maryland because it is not proper ‘charter material,'” read the order, also signed by Fader.  “Accordingly, it cannot be presented on the November 2024 general election ballot.”

Organizers of the Baby Bonus initiative said they were “deeply disappointed” by the Supreme Court’s ruling, in a statement posted on the social media platform X, saying the decision “denies Baltimore voters the opportunity to decide on a policy that could have supported families welcoming new children.”

“While this is a significant setback,” the statement added, “we remain committed to finding ways to reduce child poverty and support Baltimore families. Once we receive the full court decision, we will carefully review it to determine potential next steps, including possibly revising the amendment language for a future ballot initiative.”

Scott’s office called the high court’s decision “the right one” in a statement.

“While we’ve said from the beginning that we align with the goal of providing more Baltimore residents with access to guaranteed income, this proposal was not legally sound and should not have been on the ballot,” the mayor’s office said. “We’re grateful the Maryland Supreme Court agreed. It is our sincere hope that everyone supportive of this effort joins us in advocating for more guaranteed income programs, particularly at the national level.”

Calling the ruling a “major loss” for Baltimore, Nate Golden, president of Maryland Child Alliance, the organization behind the Baby Bonus campaign, criticized Scott and other elected officials for what he described as inaction in fighting child poverty.

“We hear a lot of rhetoric about child poverty,” said Golden, a math teacher at Forest Park High School. “But I’m still teaching a classroom full of kids experiencing it year after year after year.”

Jason Billingsley, of Harlem Park, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the killing of LaPere, a 26-year-old entrepreneur, shocking the city and its tight-knit tech community and inspiring changes to Maryland law.

Abiding by the agreement Billingsley struck with prosecutors, Baltimore Circuit Judge Robert K. Taylor sentenced him to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Billingsley will begin serving the life sentence Taylor imposed Friday after finishing simultaneous life sentences the judge handed down earlier this week in a separate case for Billingsley.

The consecutive sentences means it’s less likely he’ll ever be paroled.

“No one in any community, in my opinion, will be safe if you are free,” Taylor said.

Three days before strangling and bludgeoning LaPere to death Sept. 22, 2023, authorities said Billingsley forced his way into an basement apartment in West Baltimore’s Upton neighborhood, bound a couple, raped the woman and then set her and her boyfriend at the time on fire. On Monday, Billingsley pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted first-degree murder in that case.

Taylor had little to say when sentencing Billingsley in the home invasion case.

“The facts speak for themselves,” the judge said, giving Billingsley concurrent life sentences with the possibility of parole much later in life.

Prosecutors in the office of Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates, a Democrat, previously indicated they would seek the penalty of life without the possibility of parole — the harshest sentence under Maryland law.

People convicted of crimes of crimes of violence here become eligible for parole after serving 50% of their sentence, but it’s up to the state’s Parole Commission to decide on early release. That body considers such things as the nature of the crime and victim input.

Taylor said Billingsley would technically become eligible for parole after serving 40 years, but Bates later told reporters that he does “not suspect he will even be able to see the twinkle of light until he’s done 60 years, which would put him at 93 years of age.”

At a news conference following Friday’s hearing, Bates said his office decided to pursue a plea agreement after speaking to the victims or their families, concluding it was the appropriate course of action because it avoided the traumatizing experience of two trials.

“We wanted to have life sentences. We wanted to ensure that he would not see the light of day,” Bates said. “We feel that this plea has done that.”

In a statement, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, a Democrat, said justice had been served for Billingsley’s “heinous crimes,” which “impacted our entire city.” Scott added that he hoped the multiple life sentences would “bring a small amount of peace” to LaPere’s family and the man and woman who survived Billingsley’s attack.

On Monday, Sept. 25, 2023, Baltimore Police went to LaPere’s apartment building after her colleagues reported her missing when she didn’t show up for an 8 a.m. meeting with her start-up tech company, EcoMap Technologies, Assistant State’s Attorney Elizabeth Stock said in court. Her coworkers hadn’t seen her since the Friday night before, when she left Artscape around 10 p.m. Officers couldn’t find her.

Police returned to the building later the same day after after someone discovered her body on the roof, bloodied and with “apparent head trauma,” according to charging documents. Police identified the woman as LaPere and medics immediately declared her dead.

Officers found LaPere “with obvious signs of trauma and in a partial state of undress,” Stock said. The prosecutor added that a forensic pathologist with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner later noted that LaPere had brain hemorrhaging, orbital fractures and vaginal abrasions, among other injuries, ruling her death a homicide by strangulation and blunt force trauma.

During the investigation, police DNA analysts identified LaPere’s genetic matter on a brick located next to her body on the roof.

Homicide detectives found video showing LaPere encountered Billingsley on Howard Street the night of Friday Sept. 22, 2023, before she continued home to her apartment building, Stock said. According to charging documents, security camera footage from the apartment building showed LaPere entering the building’s lobby around 11:30 p.m. Shortly after she entered, Billingsley, who was wearing a gray hoodie and camouflage shorts, waved her to the front door. She let him in and the two were pictured getting onto an elevator together.

Later, detectives wrote of the footage, the “male suspect can be seen leaving the stairwell into the lobby with his gray hooded sweatshirt in his hand scrambling for an exit. The Black male located the front door and could see him (sic) wiping his right hand on his shorts before exiting the building.”

A witness who reviewed the security camera footage identified Billingsley, with detectives also assisted by “departmental databases and resources,” according to charging documents.

On Sept. 27, detectives interviewed another witness, who told them that they drove Billingsley to Washington, Stock said. Police “quickly” arrested him, confiscating his teal backpack. DNA analysts tested a pair of camo shorts they found inside the bag, determining that the stains were LaPere’s blood.

Stock said Billingsley confessed to detectives.

LaPere’s parents and one of her friends testified to the void her death had left in their lives. They spoke of her promise, saying she had much more to give to the world, particularly her adopted home of Baltimore.

“Pava didn’t have a hateful bone in her body,” friend Shrenik Jain said, adding that her killing “has shaken me to my core.”

When Caroline LaPere learned her daughter had been slain, “every cell in my body froze,” she told Taylor, calling it a “great injustice.”

“Pava should not have been murdered,” Caroline LaPere said.

Frank LaPere lamented that he’d never have the opportunity to walk his daughter down the aisle at her wedding, or to meet her children in the future.

“Our dinner table will forever be missing a very important person,” he said. “The crimes against my daughter had a life-altering personal effect on me.”

Billingsley’s attorney, public defender Jason Rodriguez, said in court that it was important to his client to accept responsibility for what he’d done.

“Your honor, I hold myself fully accountable and I’m very remorseful,” Billingsley told Taylor. “I sincerely and deeply apologize.”

Frank LaPere said he had “a difficult time accepting that statement” from Billingsley.

Given his criminal record, LaPere said, “I don’t think this is a person who can understand remorse or really feels it.”

Her family also led calls to introduce legislation in her honor.

Billingsley was sentenced in 2015 to 30 years in prison, with all but 14 years behind bars suspended, for a first-degree sex offense. In October 2022, he was released early after earning diminution, or “good time,” credits while incarcerated.

Stock said Billingsley was on probation from a 2009 assault case when he committed the sexual offense that landed him in prison.

“He should have never been released in the manner he was, and his victims paid the price when he decided to take advantage of that to further terrorize our city,” Scott said.

One of the bills inspired by LaPere’s killing would prevent people convicted of first-degree rape from earning diminution credits. Signed by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, the law takes effect Oct. 1.

On Sept. 19, 2023, three days before he killed LaPere, Billingsley, identifying himself as a maintenance worker, banged on the door of a basement apartment in Upton early in the morning, saying there was a flood upstairs. When April Hurley opened her door, Billingsley kicked his way in. He pointed a gun at Hurley and her then boyfriend, Jonte Gilmore.

After duct-taping Hurley and handcuffing Gilmore, authorities said Billingsley raped Hurley repeatedly and slashed her neck. When she played dead, a prosecutor said Monday, Billingsley doused Hurley and Gilmore in gasoline and set the apartment ablaze. Both victims sustained second- and third-degree burns.

The Baltimore Sun does not typically identify victims of sexual violence, but Hurley and her lawyers held a news conference in April to publicize their lawsuit against Billingsley and the companies that employed him as a building maintenance worker.

Hurley testified Monday that she suffered from constant fear for her and her young daughter’s safety, sleepless nights and post traumatic stress disorder requiring therapy and medication. She also said that people stare at the scar on her neck when she’s in public, and that the thought of intimacy repulses her.

“The impact that this heinous attack has had on my life is nothing short of devastating,” Hurley said.

At the news conference Friday, Hurley’s civil lawyer, Billy Murphy, credited Bates’ office “for swift and decisive action in bringing Jason Billingsley to justice” for “an act of unspeakable evil” against his client.

Owner Sean Underwood told The Baltimore Sun that more than 70% of the trucks used to head south from his facility, a route that took them over the Francis Scott Key Bridge, until March 26, when the massive cargo ship Dali toppled the span.

“People just think, ‘Oh, you can take the tunnel.’ Well, we aren’t allowed to run our traffic through the tunnel,” Underwood said of restrictions on hazardous materials in the harbor tunnels. “So what are we supposed to do? Just be put out of business? It might take them five years to fix that bridge.”

On Tuesday, Underwood Energy sued the Singaporean companies that own and operate the Dali, arguing they should be held responsible for damages related to the collapse that also killed six construction workers.

Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and Synergy Marine Group have sought to limit their liability in the disaster, but the propane distributor contended in a legal filing that not only should their liability not be limited, but that “an example should be made” of the ship’s owner and operator.

“We’ve lost sizable clients because of the bridge collapse,” Underwood said in an interview, noting that tractor trailers now must make a 30-mile detour around Interstate 695. “It’s been beyond detrimental to the success of that facility. In our world, you’re successful based on margins of pennies. To essentially double your freight because the bridge is gone, it makes you non competitive.”

His company’s legal filing described the Dali as “unseaworthy” and its owners and operators as “negligent.”

The “allision with the Key Bridge,” Underwood’s lawyers wrote, “was foreseeable, avoidable, and a direct and proximate result of Petitioners’ carelessness, negligence, gross negligence, and recklessness, coupled with the unseaworthiness of the Dali.”

Darrell Wilson, a spokesperson for Grace Ocean and Synergy, declined to comment on Underwood’s legal filing.

“Unfortunately due to the ongoing investigations, in which we are fully participating and the legal proceedings, it would be inappropriate for us to comment at this time,” he said in a statement.

Bryan Short, an attorney for Underwood, called the gas industry a “cutthroat business” and said that his client is now at a marked disadvantage with competitors.

“My client believes that there’s been a great harm to the area surrounding Baltimore that needs to be addressed by the authorities and the parties responsible,” Short said.

Much of maritime law is rooted in decades- and centuries-old precedent. In this case, a 1927 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Robins Dry Dock v. Flint, could make it difficult for Underwood’s filing to succeed, Baltimore attorney Charles Simmons said Tuesday. Without direct, physical damage to a claimant’s property (such as the bridge itself or the people and vehicles on it), it is challenging to recover lost business.

“Under the current state of maritime law, it is hard to imagine that these types of claims — without a physical loss or personal injury — are going to result in recoveries involving economic losses,” said Simmons, who teaches maritime law at the University of Baltimore and University of Maryland law schools and practices at Whiteford, Taylor & Preston.

The Dali lost power twice in the shadow of the Key Bridge on March 26, rendering it mostly adrift as it smashed into one of the span’s critical support columns, but the legal claims filed to date against Synergy and Grace Ocean, including Underwood’s, focus on what happened before the massive cargo ship left the Port of Baltimore’s Seagirt Marine Terminal.

Federal investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board determined that the Dali lost power twice about 10 hours before it departed on a voyage for Sri Lanka.

The in-port blackouts, or total power losses, led crew members to switch breakers for the ship’s electrical power system, according to the NTSB’s preliminary investigative report. The replacement breakers tripped after the 984-foot Dali departed early the morning of March 26, causing the first of two complete power losses aboard within about half a mile of the bridge.

More recently, investigators have narrowed their probe on an electrical component about the diameter of a soda can. The NTSB brought in representatives from the ship’s Korean manufacturer, Hyundai, to analyze the device.

Less than a week after the bridge fell, the companies that own and manage the Dali filed under a 19th-century federal statute to clear themselves of liability and limit potential damages related to the collapse to the salvage value of the ship and the revenue it stood to make from its cargo, which they estimated at $43.7 million.

In the weeks and months after the collapse, crews searched for the bodies of six construction workers who plunged to their deaths in the Patapsco River and then removed the crumpled span and tons of highway debris from its murky waters. Those salvage efforts cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and authorities estimate it will take at least $1.7 billion to rebuild the bridge, which officials expect to be completed by fall of 2028.

While responding to the disaster, Maryland and federal officials pledged to hold the Dali’s owner and manager accountable.

Baltimore’s mayor and city council were quick to allege negligence on the parts of the companies behind the Dali, arguing in a court filing that they allowed a ship unfit to sail to leave the Port of Baltimore. Others, including a Baltimore publishing company, followed suit with similar legal arguments.

The law that Synergy and Grace Ocean filed under to protect their companies — the Limitation of Liability Act of 1851 — came under scrutiny in the aftermath of the Key Bridge collapse. Arguing the statute, designed to protect the maritime industry, was outdated, some federal lawmakers pledged an overhaul.

Democratic U.S. Reps. John Garamendi and Hank Johnson, of California and Georgia, introduced a bill in August that would retroactively increase the liability rate of foreign vessels beginning the day before the bridge collapse. Under their legislation, the companies behind the Dali could be on the hook for as much as $854 million.

Baltimore Sun reporter Madeleine O’Neill contributed to this article.

Jason Billingsley, 33, pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted first-degree murder, charges stemming from a September home invasion during which authorities said Billingsley forced his way into a basement apartment in Upton, bound a couple at gunpoint and raped the woman before dousing them in gasoline and setting them — and the residence — ablaze.

Baltimore Circuit Judge Robert K. Taylor said Monday’s plea was part of a “package deal” with prosecutors that will see Billingsley admit in court Friday to killing LaPere three days after the home invasion. He is charged with first-degree murder in LaPere’s death.

In the home invasion case, Taylor sentenced Billingsley to two terms of life in prison, to be served simultaneously, rather than one after the other. Taylor’s punishment followed an agreement Billingsley struck with prosecutors that could allow him an opportunity for parole much later in life.

“I don’t see any point in me giving a lecture. The facts speak for themselves,” Taylor said.

People convicted of crimes of violence in Maryland become eligible for parole after serving 50% of their sentence, but it’s up to the Parole Commission whether to grant someone early release.

Prosecutors in the office of Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates previously indicated they would seek penalties of life in prison without the possibility of parole — the maximum penalty under Maryland law — if they secured convictions in both the home invasion and murder cases.

In a statement, Bates, a Democrat, said his office’s “hearts continue to be with the survivors” and that he hoped the outcome “brings them, their loved ones, and their community some measure of closure and healing.”

“Today’s plea ensures that a dangerous individual will spend the rest of his life behind bars, unable to harm anyone else,” Bates said. “The horrific acts of false imprisonment, assault, and attempted murder have left a lasting impact on the lives of not only the victims but our city as a whole.”

Early on the morning of Sept. 19, 2023, Billingsley identified himself as a maintenance worker as he banged on the door of the basement apartment and yelled that “there was a flood upstairs,” Assistant State’s Attorney Tonya LaPolla said in court.

When April Hurley came to the door, Billingsley kicked his way in and pointed a gun at her and her boyfriend at the time, Jonte Gilmore, according to charging documents. Billingsley then bound Hurley with duct tape and handcuffed Gilmore before sexually assaulting Hurley repeatedly and slashing her neck with a knife.

“When Ms. Hurley pretended to be dead,” LaPolla said, “the defendant poured gasoline on her” and Gilmore and set the residence ablaze.

LaPolla said Hurley escaped from a window to get help. Medics took her to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center and Gilmore to the burn center at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. Both sustained second- and third-degree burns, according to charging documents, and LaPolla said Gilmore required several skin grafts.

“The impact that this heinous attack has had on my life is nothing short of devastating,” Hurley told Taylor on Monday, saying that she suffers from constant fear for her safety, many sleepless nights and post-traumatic stress disorder that requires therapy and medication management.

She said she struggles to be in public now because “when people speak to me, now I can see their eyes are focused on the scars on my neck.”

Hurley also testified to being repulsed by the thought of intimacy.

“My body has been violated,” she said.

LaPolla said Hurley and Gilmore identified Billingsley “as their assailant.”

The Baltimore Sun typically does not identify victims of sexual assault, but Hurley and her lawyers held a news conference to announce their lawsuit against Billingsley and the companies that employed him as a building maintenance worker.

In a statement Monday, the attorneys representing Hurley in her civil case, of the firm Murphy, Falcon and Murphy, said they were “relieved” that Billingsley “will spend the rest of his natural life in prison.”

“Yet, no sentence can undo the trauma she endured — not only at the hands of Jason Billingsley but also due to the negligence of those who were responsible for property where she lived,” the civil attorneys said.

Detectives wrote in charging documents that they found “fruits of the crime” in a backpack found in the bushes in the backyard of the Upton rowhouse. In the black and lime green backpack, investigators found a serrated knife, rolls of duct tape, several pieces of used tape with hair on them, handcuffs, a hooded sweatshirt and condom wrappers, charging documents say. Next to the backpack, they found a bleach container, a gas can and a lighter.

LaPolla also said police recovered a used condom, and that DNA testing revealed Billingsley had used it and indicated he sexually assaulted Hurley.

Billingsley’s attorney, public defender Jason Rodriguez, advised his client of the various rights he was giving up by pleading guilty, but did not say anything about the charges or Billingsley in court. A spokesperson for the Office of the Public Defender did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Six days after Billingsley broke into the basement apartment, on Sept. 25, 2023, Baltimore Police rushed to an apartment building in Mount Vernon where someone found a woman’s body on the roof, bloodied with “apparent head trauma,” charging documents say. Medics immediately declared LaPere dead.

Her killing rocked the tight-knit tech community of Baltimore, where the 26-year-old LaPere was beloved and considered an up-and-coming leader.

As the community mourned her, homicide detectives reviewed security camera footage from her apartment complex. The video showed LaPere enter the building’s lobby around 11:30 p.m. Sept. 22 and later a man in a gray hoodie summoned her to the front door with a wave, according to charging documents. Investigators saw the man get on the elevator with LaPere.

Later, detectives wrote of the footage, the “male suspect can be seen leaving the stairwell into the lobby with his gray hooded sweatshirt in his hand scrambling for an exit. The Black male located the front door and could see him (sic) wiping his right hand on his shorts before exiting the building.”

A witness’s review of the security video and department databases helped detectives identify Billingsley.

Billingsley spoke with investigators for about two hours following his Sept. 28 arrest near a train station in Bowie. Taylor previously ruled that prosecutors could play video of his interrogation at the murder trial, denying a request from his lawyer to exclude the footage.

LaPere’s killing inspired two bills in the Maryland General Assembly last session, one of which, proponents said, would prevent people like Billingsley from being in a position to attack LaPere when he did.

In 2015, Billingsley was sentenced to 30 years in prison, with all but 14 years behind bars suspended, for a first-degree sex offense. He was released early in October 2022 after earning diminution, or “good time,” credits while incarcerated.

One of the bills passed in LaPere’s honor will prohibit people convicted of first-degree rape from earning diminution credits. Signed into law by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, that law takes effect Oct. 1.

LaPere’s family said in a statement Monday that they’ve endured persistent pain since she was killed, 339 days ago.

“Justice may be served, but it will never fill the void, erase the grief, or replace the impact Pava would have had if given the full life that she deserved,” the family said.

They added that they would expand upon their statement in court Friday.

Law enforcement authorities claim Jason Billingsley broke into a home in West Baltimore’s Upton neighborhood in September, restrained a couple at gunpoint, sexually assaulted the woman and set both people on fire three days before strangling and bludgeoning tech entrepreneur Pave LaPere to death.

Prosecutors have filed notice of their intent to seek a sentence of life without the possibility of parole in each case, if they secure convictions against Billingsley on the most serious charges.

He is scheduled to stand trial in Baltimore City Circuit Court first in the home invasion case in which he is charged with attempted first-degree murder, first- and second-degree rape, first-degree assault and false imprisonment.

Billingsley’s attorney, public defender Jason Rodriguez, did not respond to a request for comment.

According to charging documents, the woman Billingsley is charged with sexually assaulting told authorities she heard a loud banging noise in the early morning of Sept. 19, 2023. There was a man at her door who identified himself as a maintenance worker, according to charging documents, kicked in the door and pointed a gun at the woman and her boyfriend.

The woman said the assailant duct-taped her and handcuffed her boyfriend before raping her repeatedly and slashing her neck with a knife, detectives wrote in charging documents. The assailant then poured liquid on the couple and set them — and their basement apartment — ablaze.

Medics took the woman to University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center and the man to the burn center at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. Charging documents say they both sustained second- and third-degree burns. Another unidentified person also was injured. Fire officials estimated that the blaze caused $15,000 in damage.

Detectives wrote that they found “fruits of the crime” in a backpack found in the bushes in the backyard of the Upton rowhouse.

In the black and lime green backpack, investigators found a serrated knife, rolls of duct tape, several pieces of used tape with hair on them, handcuffs, a hooded sweatshirt and condom wrappers, charging documents say. Next to the backpack, they found a bleach container, a gas can and a lighter.

Detectives wrote in charging documents that they identified Billingsley through security footage from the day of the break-in, which showed him wearing a mask, and the day before, when Billingsley was pictured “fixing things, doing yard work, and walking inside of the location.”

The woman’s boyfriend also identified Billingsley from a photo array.

The man and woman Billingsley is accused of attacking, April Hurley and Jonte Gilmore, sued him and the companies that employed him as a building maintenance worker. The Baltimore Sun typically does not identify victims of sexual assault without their consent, but Hurley and her lawyers held a news conference to announce the suit.

On Sept. 25, 2023, six days after police say Billingsley broke into the Upton rowhouse, Baltimore police responded to an apartment building in Mount Vernon where someone found a woman’s body on the roof, bloodied with “apparent head trauma,” officials said. It was LaPere, a tech entrepreneur of local renown, and medics immediately declared her dead.

Homicide detectives pored over security footage from the apartment building. According to charging documents, video showed LaPere enter the building’s lobby around 11:30 p.m. Sept. 22 and later let a man wearing a gray hoodie, who waved her to the front door, inside. Detectives watched as they got onto an elevator together.

Later, detectives wrote of the footage, the “male suspect can be seen leaving the stairwell into the lobby with his gray hooded sweatshirt in his hand scrambling for an exit. The Black male located the front door and could see him (sic) wiping his right hand on his shorts before exiting the building.”

Police used departmental databases and a witness’ review of the security video to identify Billingsley, according to charging documents. He is charged with first-degree murder and with wielding a deadly weapon with the intent to injure another. Detectives noted that there was a brick next to LaPere’s body.

Billingsley is set to stand trial on charges stemming from LaPere’s death immediately after his first trial concludes. A separate jury will be selected to hear that case.

Baltimore Circuit Judge Robert K. Taylordenied a request by Billingsley to exclude video of his police interrogation from the murder trial, meaning prosecutors likely will play the two-hour video in court.

News of the 26-year-old entrepreneur’s killing sent shock waves throughout Baltimore last fall, hitting especially close to home in the city’s tight-knit tech scene, where LaPere was regarded as a leader. The Johns Hopkins University graduate’s death also inspired bills in the Maryland General Assembly, one of which, proponents argued, could prevent attacks like hers.

In 2015, Billingsley was sentenced to 30 years in prison, with all but 14 years behind bars suspended, for a first-degree sex offense. He was released early in October 2022 after earning diminution, or “good time,” credits while incarcerated.

One of the bills put forth in LaPere’s honor will prohibit people convicted of first-degree rape from earning diminution credits. Signed into law by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, that law takes effect Oct. 1.