Lawyers representing David Linthicum, the 25-year-old Cockeysville man accused of shooting two Baltimore County Police officers last year, asked a judge Thursday to kick the state’s attorney’s office off the case or dismiss it.
In a motion filed Thursday, Deborah Katz Levi and James Dills accused the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office of being “personally invested in the outcome of this criminal prosecution, which results in its partiality towards the alleged victims and its personal disdain for Mr. Linthicum.”
Levi, the director of special litigation for the Maryland Office of Public Defender, and Dills, the district public defender for Baltimore County, wrote that prosecutors’ “close relationship” with the two injured officers had jeopardized their client’s right to a fair trial. That “conflict of interest,” they wrote, meant the judge should remove prosecutors or dismiss the case.
In a separate motion, they also asked prosecutors to turn over internal police department investigations into past uses of force by county officers involved in the case.
Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger declined to comment Thursday on the defense’s motions.
The defense team has been fighting prosecutors for more than a year, previously asking the judge to dismiss the indictments, exclude county officers from testifying and sanction prosecutors.
A motions hearing is scheduled for Aug. 29 before Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge Dennis M. Robinson. Linthicum’s trial for charges of attempted murder, assault, carjacking and firearms offenses is set to begin Sept. 16.
On Feb. 8, 2023, Baltimore County Police arrived at the home of Linthicum’s father after he called to report his son was suicidal. According to prosecutors, Linthicum fired a rifle at Officer Barry Jordan and fled, leading law enforcement on a two-day search that ended after a stand-off in Fallston. Along the way, police said, Linthicum shot and critically wounded Detective Jonathan Chih and stole his police vehicle.
“From the inception of this prosecution, the State in general, and Deputy State’s Attorney John Cox, in particular, have replaced their role as ministers of justice with that of advocates for the alleged victims,” Levi and Dills wrote in their Thursday motion.
Linthicum’s defense team previously accused prosecutors of misconduct, citing in part a donation the state’s attorney’s office made to an online fundraiser for Chih. Shellenberger said the money was collected from employees within the office as individuals and did not come from his office in its official capacity.
Robinson also has faulted prosecutors for taking too long to hand over documents that they initially said did not exist.
For more than a year, attorneys for the two sides butted heads in court over which evidence should be handed over to the defense and how quickly. Cox also tried and failed to have Levi taken off Linthicum’s case last summer, citing the fact that her husband’s brother and law partner was representing Chih in a worker’s compensation case.
In Thursday’s filings, defense attorneys said prosecutors should turn over police internal affairs files for officers involved in the search for Linthicum, including the two officers who were shot. At a July 11 meeting, Cox and a lawyer for the police department allowed defense attorneys to view some of the files on a screen, they wrote.
Levi and Dills wrote that prosecutors should have disclosed files that show the narcotics team that approached Linthicum on Warren Road, where Chih was shot, “have between them over one hundred use of force cases and multiple red flag alerts for questionable behavior.”
The files include a 2023 complaint against Officer Barry Jordan for unnecessary force when responding to a call for service for a suicidal, armed subject, according to court filings. Levi and Dills argued that although Jordan was exonerated of misconduct in that incident, it should have been disclosed since it involved the county’s mobile crisis team and “is similar in nature to the initial call for service in the Linthicum case.”
Linthicum’s attorneys also claimed that the state’s attorney’s office had delayed both a criminal investigation and an internal police department administrative investigation into Chih’s use of force — he returned fire against Linthicum — until after Linthicum’s trial.
Under a 2021 state law, investigations into citizen complaints against officers, which are reviewed by a county’s administrative charging committee , must be completed within a year and a day of when the complaint is filed.
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