Denied bail, Annapolis High graduates finally home after Senior Week assault

The Wawa on 120th Street is dreary in the light of a November afternoon. But 90 minutes before dawn on June 14, the convenience store was hopping.

A dozen kids were celebrating Senior Week, halcyon days after graduation. Friends in Ocean City, free from high school and as yet unburdened with adulthood.

There was beer and weed. Kids from different parts of Maryland just hanging. Six were from Annapolis, united by their years on the high school football team and just a week after getting their diplomas.

Matthew threw the first punch.

A boy from Baltimore County fell to the ground, his diamond stud earring popping out. Matthew turned away, but Christian stepped in and kicked the boy as he curled into a protective ball.

He grabbed the boy's Louis Vuitton shoulder bag, and his friend, Michael, snatched the Christian Dior sneakers off his feet. They ran to their hotel across Coastal Highway.

"I saw the shoes. I liked the shoes. I took the shoes," Michael later told police.

Ocean City Police took five kids from Annapolis into custody before noon. Detectives walked each to a patrol car in the Carousel Hotel garage for a "show up," where the victim seated in back identified them as his attackers.

They screwed up. No doubt. Luckily, no one was seriously hurt.

Unluckily, this happened in Worcester County, where punishment sometimes comes before trial. Three were charged with felonies and held without bail for almost five months. Another is still awaiting a hearing in juvenile detention. Charges against the fifth were dropped.

"We're a conservative judicial system," said Thomas J. Maronick Jr., an Ocean City attorney who defended Michael. "The judges, they really try to protect the community."

These are kids who had no criminal record. They have families and homes, jobs. They admitted what they did and cooperated with police. Their families were shocked, and you should be, too.

"We gave him those talks on what not to do," Michael's aunt, Amanda, told the judge. "These are the consequences."

But you should be equally shocked by the way justice was meted out.

Young people are often denied bail when they face a District Court commissioner on charges in Ocean City, attorneys familiar with Senior Week said.

There have been lawsuits about police conduct in this beach community. What isn't widely known is this message from the courts — screw up, and you won't be going home anytime soon.

"I'm not sure how this message gets out to these young men," Judge Brian D. Shockley said from the bench during Christian's sentencing Nov. 1 in Snow Hill. "This is not acceptable in Ocean City. This should not be acceptable anywhere."

I'm not fully identifying these 18-year-olds because their convictions will hang over them for years. I don't need to pile on. Prosecutors dropped felony robbery, assault and theft charges in exchange for guilty pleas to misdemeanors. Sentences were suspended after time served, with fines, court costs and years of probation.

If they mess up again, prison looms.

"If you think four months in the county jail is unpleasant, try the Department of Corrections for eight years," the judge told Christian.

Punishment before trial is not the norm in Maryland. Twelve Salisbury University students were charged last month in neighboring Wicomico County with using a dating app to lure a gay man to an apartment for sex and then beating the tar out of him. They were released without having to pay bail.

In Ocean City, bending justice appears to be routine.

"This conviction is going to screw him up for life," said attorney Ryan D. Bodley, who represented Christian. "But he did not deserve to sit in jail for five months."

The victim didn't come to the courthouse in Snow Hill for the hearings. He told prosecutors he wanted his shoes, bag and the $100 inside it returned. He got that.

What prompted the attack is unclear. Unlike the crowded boardwalk, there are no video cameras behind the Wawa.

The victim told police the two groups had been together all day. Shortly before 4 a.m., they were in the back parking lot when his friend went to the other side of the WaWa with one of the Annapolis boys.

The victim told prosecutors that's when the remaining Annapolis boys attacked him — it just "popped off."

I couldn't reach him to hear more about what happened that night.

The boys told their attorneys that the victim and his friend had tried to sell them cannabis all day, and Matthew finally got fed up. Christian told his family the victim and his friend are white — he and the other Annapolis boys are Black or Hispanic — and tossed racially insensitive language around, despite being asked to stop.

As families usually do, parents, grandmas, aunts and uncles had a sympathetic ear for hints of injustice.

"There was a lot that wasn't in the police report," said Lisa, Christian's grandmother.

Dozens of teachers, coaches, employers and clergy flooded the court with letters on the boy's character. Even the judges acknowledged it was more than the usual loved ones' belief that criminal defendants are just misunderstood.

"At the beginning of every game during Christian's senior year, while in the locker room, he would talk to all the underclassmen and remind them how grateful he was to call them brothers and how much they meant to him," Annapolis football head coach Dewayne Hunt wrote in July.

Matthew marked his 18th birthday behind bars in September. He could have waited for a juvenile court proceeding and kept the outcome private. Instead, he chose an adult conviction and home.

Christian and Michael spent their time at the "Snow Hilton," a nickname for the Worcester County jail. There's no air conditioning, but the staff has a reputation for being kind to young defendants.

Both pleaded guilty in exchange for prosecutors' recommendation to send them home.

"Everyone starts somewhere," Judge Beau H. Oglesby told Michael. "This is a pretty serious and egregious event to be your first contact with law enforcement."

Because Christian kicked the defenseless victim, Judge Shockley gave him the stiffest of all the sentences. Seven years in prison with all but six months suspended.

Another 45 days in jail.

"It's hard on him, but he's going to stay strong," his father, Ken, said as the family huddled outside the courtroom.

Then, a surprise.

Jailers calculated good-time credits for Christian based on his work in the jailhouse kitchen. They're not supposed to do that for inmates awaiting trial. Bordley, his lawyer, thinks someone figured a good kid had stayed long enough at the Snow Hilton.

So Christian made it to Annapolis in time to see his old team play Arundel High, a perennial nemesis. Hugs and cheers all around.

But there's no real happy ending here. Annapolis lost, 43-6.