State Prison

A Boonsboro man convicted of bludgeoning his next-door neighbor with a sawed-off riot baton insisted he was innocent Wednesday in Washington County Circuit Court just before he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. "John Miller attacked me ... at my home, on my property," William Bryan Bolton Jr. told Judge John H. McDowell. In an October bench trial, McDowell found Bolton, 50, guilty of first- and second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and reckless endangerment while intoxicated.

Sentenced to state prison in September for a second-degree assault conviction, a Smithsburg man was back in Washington County Circuit Court Thursday to plead guilty to first-degree assault for slashing a man with a knife in May. Judge M. Kenneth Long Jr. sentenced Robert B. Heare, 28, of 7B N. Main St., to 20 years in state prison with 10 years suspended. That will run concurrent with the 10-year sentence, with five years suspended, that he received when sentenced in September. "It's clear you have committed a number of violent crimes," Long told Heare after Assistant State's Attorney Brett Wilson read off the defendant's criminal history, which included an eight-year state prison sentence in 2000 for another first-degree assault conviction.

Two inmates were injured, including one with 15 puncture wounds, during a fight Sunday night at a state prison south of Hagerstown, according to a state prison system spokesman. The altercation was reported at about 9 p.m. at Maryland Correctional Institution-Hagerstown. Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services spokesman Mark Vernarelli wrote in an e-mail on Monday that the inmate who had 15 puncture wounds had surgery Sunday night and was expected to fully recover.

A Brooklyn, N.Y., man convicted by a jury in April of possession with intent to distribute cocaine resulting from a traffic stop on Interstate 81 was sentenced Tuesday in Washington County Circuit Court to 15 years in state prison. Judge John H. McDowell sentenced Garette Edgar Kearse to 15 years, but suspended six years of the sentence. Because Kearse was in possession of more than 28 grams of cocaine, Robert Veil, the supervising state's attorney for the Washington County Narcotics Task Force, argued that Kearse's sentence should include having to serve five years without being eligible for parole.

HAGERSTOWN -- More than three decades after being convicted of attempting to shoot a correctional officer while trying to escape from the Washington County Courthouse, a state prison inmate has been granted a new trial. Washington County Circuit Judge W. Kennedy Boone III on Wednesday granted the petition of James E. Moore based on Moore's attorney not having hearkened, or polled, the jury after Moore's second trial in 1982. "Granting the Petitioner a new trial is based solely on the procedural error only, and not on the evidence, which was more than sufficient to sustain the convictions," Boone wrote in his opinion.

CUMBERLAND, Md. -- A grand jury has indicted an inmate at the North Branch Correctional Institution in Allegany County, Md., on a charge of first-degree murder in the Dec. 30, 2009, death of his cellmate, Clarence Meyers, the office of Allegany County State's Attorney Michael O. Twigg said Tuesday. The Allegany County grand jury handed up the indictment of Christopher Robert White, 35, on Tuesday, the state's attorney's office said in an e-mail. He is charged in the indictment with the murder of Meyers, 39, who was found dead in his cell at the prison near Cumberland, Md., on Dec. 30, according to the Allegany County State's Attorney's Office.

HAGERSTOWN - Alec Scott Eger, who entered a plea earlier this year to first-degree murder in the Halloween 2008 killing of Billy Lee Black, was sentenced Tuesday in Washington County Circuit Court to life in prison. Washington County Circuit Judge Daniel P. Dwyer denied a defense request that Eger, 20, be sentenced to life with all but 25 years suspended. Dwyer also denied a defense request that Eger be sent to Patuxent Institution, a state prison equipped to provide mental health treatment and counseling.

A look back at the top news stories of 2009 in Washington County Part 1 On Wednesday, The Herald-Mail presented some of the top news events of the first half of 2009. They included: ? A 50-vehicle crash on Interstate 70 in which two people were killed. ? The recapture of a convicted murderer, five days after he escaped from a state prison south of Hagerstown. ? Williamsport High School?s girls track team earning the first-ever state title in the sport for Washington County.

Two inmates at the prison complex south of Hagerstown committed suicide over the holiday weekend, said Mark Vernarelli, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. The deaths, which were unrelated, occurred at the Maryland Correctional Training Center and the Maryland Correctional Institution, Vernarelli said. Although the prison system has in place programs designed to help to prevent suicides, sometimes staff doesn't get any indication that an inmate is a suicide risk, Vernarelli said.

WASHINGTON COUNTY -- Residents who live near the state prison complex south of Hagerstown can now receive electronic messages that warn them of an inmate escape. The new alert system, which eventually will phase out the use of a steam whistle siren in Washington County and a siren in Jessup, Md., is designed to notify people by text message, phone and e-mail. Maryland's Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services launched the system statewide Wednesday morning at the complex on Roxbury Road.