By Kenneth C. Rossignol
ST. MARY'S TODAY

LEONARDTOWN --- Should St. Mary's States Attorney Richard Fritz have pursued the prosecution of a
16-year old kid for rape while there wasn't any evidence to support the charge?  Should the local judges who all refused to consider the evidence that cleared the boy of the allegations of rape be reprimanded? 

Don't get your hopes up.  Judges live a life of privilege and seldom have to answer for being dumb. 

Should a Maryland State Trooper be reprimanded for lying under oath in court?  Should St. Mary's
Sheriff's detectives be reprimanded for playing fast and loose with the facts and pursuing a case which was not supported by the facts?

These questions are pertinent as a local family finally...well, almost finally was able to walk out of the courtroom with their very dumb but innocent son due to the hard work of defense attorney Kevin J. McDevitt.

Boys who stay out all night with 12 year old girls need to understand that all hell can break loose and it
did, even if the girls consent, which they legally can't. 

Richard Fritz paid $451 per hour for a expert witness to come to Leonardtown to testify that it is normal for victims of a violent rape to not have any injuries.  At that hourly rate, the expert likely passes out plenty of business cards.

Fritz could have used himself as an expert witness, as he pleaded guilty to having raped a 15 year-old
girl when he was 18, along with two others.  Fritz later told ABC News that it wasn't rape, the girl consented and 3 teens having sex with a underage girl "happens all the time" in St. Mary's County. He ought to know.  The girl in that case said she was held down while she screamed for help and they took turns raping her.

In this case, the facts showed that the two girls in this complaint were seen with the boys in the case
 8 hours after they were allegedly snatched from the road and dragged to a house and raped.  One girl admitted that she and her boyfriend had consensual sex and no charges were placed against this kid. 
The girl who was the alleged victim in the case caught hell when she got home after being out all night
 and it was the boyfriend of the mother who called 911 to report that the girl was forcibly and violently raped.

The boy admitted that the two had been intimately involved but had not had sex which the medical examination supported.

The prosecutor in the case, Joe Stanalonis,  realized just before trial that he had nothing and walked
 away from it, dumping the case on the very talented Dan White who still could not turn a sow's ear
into a silk purse.

But after hearing all the evidence in the case, which included testimony that the girl in question was
 never penetrated and had no injuries, the jury took but 20 minutes to find John Edison not guilty. 

The boy was in jail for six months when he should have been granted bail.  When the verdict was announced, the bozo St. Mary's Sheriff's Department failed to release him in the courtroom to his family and the Judge failed to issue the order to release him even though he was found not guilty.  Why?  The Sheriff's Department insists that he have to go back to the jail for the paperwork to finalize his release from detention.  

All the St. Mary's Sheriff's Department has to do is watch Law and Order and they can see that when a person is found not guilty, he or she walks out of the courtroom, not back into handcuffs for transport
to the jail. 

Remember folks, this is the town run by the Mad Hatter.