The Baltimore man accused of trying to steal a $3.1 million private jet used by Sun co-owner David Smith will undergo a competency evaluation and be held without bail until it is complete, a Baltimore County District judge ruled Wednesday.
A competency evaluation determines whether a defendant is mentally fit to stand trial, by assessing whether he or she understands the nature of the legal proceedings and whether he or she can assist in their defense.
Joseph Goldman’s competency evaluation was a joint request by his attorney, Alisa Fornwald from the Office of the Public Defender, and the Baltimore County prosecutor at a bail review hearing for him Wednesday.
Fornwald said in court that she was requesting the evaluation based on conversations she had with her 43-year-old client and his mother. Fornwald declined to give further comment after the hearing. Goldman’s mother left the Baltimore County District Courthouse without speaking to the media.
Online court records show Goldman faces two felony theft charges and two misdemeanor trespassing offenses. The two felony theft charges carry a combined maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. Goldman’s trial date is scheduled for Oct. 16.
Police say in charging documents that he entered the aircraft Friday, which officials said was located in a restricted area of the Middle River airport, and turned the engine on. He was stopped, according to police documents, by the plane’s actual pilot.
The aircraft had been “left unattended” before Goldman was found. Police wrote in charging documents that he has an airline transport pilot license and knows how to fly a plane.
“Goldman was the sole occupant of the aircraft when he turned the engine on, giving him constructive control of the aircraft as he attempted to steal the aircraft and takeoff,” a state police officer wrote.
Goldman appeared in court by video from the county detention center. He asked the Baltimore County District Judge Krystin J. Richardson a few questions about what would happen next and what steps his attorney had taken, before Richardson told him the hearing was over and he would be held pending the competency evaluation.
No other new details came out during the hearing.
Goldman said Tuesday at an initial bail review that airport security let him into the part of the Martin State Airport where the plane’s pilot found him. He agreed to a postponed bail review because he didn’t yet have an attorney.
“I’d really like to go home,” Goldman said Tuesday. “These charges are a little bit steep.”
Goldman previously served in the U.S. Army as a military police officer, according to the military social network website Rally Point. In 2017, he was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison for possessing unregistered firearms and making a firearm.
Defendants who are deemed not competent, in Maryland’s court system, are typically committed to a Maryland Department of Health psychiatric facility for treatment. They can be reevaluated for competency and undergo trial if and when they are found competent.
Some of those people, however, have been left to languish in Maryland’s jails because there is a chronic shortage of psychiatric bed space in the health department’s system. Officials have said there is a waitlist of close to 200 defendants — people with severe mental illness who are too sick to participate in their cases and who are considered dangerous.
The private jet is used by David Smith, who co-owns The Baltimore Sun and is executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group, a company based in Hunt Valley that owns television stations including Baltimore’s FOX45.
The police charging documents identify the jet as a “G4,” a likely reference to a Gulfstream G-IV aircraft.
Federal Aviation Administration records show a 1994 G-IV plane registered in Baltimore City to AP Aviation LLC, care of Steven B. Fader. It is the only G-IV registered in Baltimore City or Baltimore or Harford counties. (Police wrote in the charging documents it was a 1984 plane, rather than 1994.)
Business records for AP Aviation LLC, which appears to have four private jets registered with the FAA, list Fader, of Atlantic Automotive Corp., as the principal officer. A February filing with the SEC lists the jet as one that Sinclair can lease by the hour. That same filing says the Sinclair rate is to remain the same regardless of whether the aircraft is used by “direct and indirect owners of Atlantic Automotive Group, Inc., Executive Flight Solutions LLC (i.e. S&F Aviation, LLC and Steven B. Fader and Davis D. Smith), and all third-party charters.”
Atlantic Automotive does business as MileOne Autogroup, an automotive retail group that Fader runs as CEO. Smith is a board member of MileOne AutoGroup Inc. and “the majority of its direct and indirect subsidiaries,” according to a corporate governance biography on Sinclair’s website.
FlightAware, a flight tracking website, shows the G-IV aircraft has made recent trips to Portland, Maine, and Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Colorado.
On Friday, the day Goldman is accused of improperly entering the aircraft, the plane left Martin State Airport at 4:47 p.m. and arrived in Maine shortly before 6 p.m., the website shows.
Baltimore Sun reporter Lorraine Mirabella contributed to this article.
