DENIES ALL GUILT, DID NOT WISH TO PARTICIPATE
IN COURT PROCEEDINGS;  OFFERS  ‘O.J.  DEFENSE’

‘The real killer is still out there somewhere,’ he says

WAGNER ‘LOST’ IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM FOR 2 HOURS
 
By Alan Z. Forman
 
The murderer of Stephen Pitcairn “didn’t want to get up this morning” to learn his fate, “didn’t want to be here,” he told a packed courtroom at the downtown Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse two hours after he was originally scheduled to be sentenced.

John A. Wagner then echoed O.J. Simpson, telling the judge he did “not believe justice was served in [his] favor” because “the real killer is still out there somewhere.”

With that, along with an assertion that “I do not stand here to be apologetic,” convicted killer Wagner, 38, known to his former Section 8 housemates as “YaYa,” received a sentence of life plus 20 years for the brutal slaying of Johns Hopkins University researcher Pitcairn, who he stabbed through the heart in the 2600 block of St. Paul Street in Charles Village in July a year ago.

At 9:30 a.m. Friday — the scheduled time for sentencing — the courtroom filled with Pitcairn Family members, who had traveled from various locations along the East Coast; attorneys, prosecution and defense; the primary detective in the case, Gregory Boris; local media; and other onlookers were told that Wagner’s arrival would be delayed two hours and to return to the courtroom at 11:30.

What they weren’t told was that the defendant had been “lost” in the system and that authorities “didn’t know where he was,” according to a court insider who spoke with Voice of Baltimore and North Baltimore Patch ^[2] on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss details of the convicted killer’s whereabouts.

OFFICIALS WERE ANGRY

Officials of the State’s Attorney’s Office were angry that the Pitcairn Family received yet another blow this close to the case’s conclusion, that they were forced to cool their heels an additional two hours because of what was termed a “system snafu,” the court insider said.

Wagner, it turned out, had been “moved around the system and somehow got misplaced,” VoB and Patch ^[2] were told, finally turning up in City Jail.

But at 11:30 a.m. he was delivered, in handcuffs and leg irons, to the courtroom of Associate Baltimore City Circuit Judge Charles J. Peters, who ignored defense pleas for leniency based on Wagner’s alleged “abusive upbringing” and the defendant’s own claim of innocence to pronounce the maximum sentence allowed by law, without any reduction in time — which could have provided eligibility for his participation in a state prison program offering life and job training, known as the Patuxent Institution’s “Eligible Person Program.”

Assistant Public Defender Gregory Fischer said Wagner’s sister had described extensive abuse endured by his client from early childhood on, including severe beatings by a heartless alcoholic father and a mother who sent him out to steal for the family of 10 when he was barely six years old.

‘WHAT HE DID WAS MONSTROUS’

In killing Pitcairn, “what he did was monstrous,” Fischer told the court, but “Mr. Wagner is not the monster he’s made out to be.”

The judge however was not swayed. “I am going to show you the same mercy that you showed Mr. Pitcairn,” he told Wagner in pronouncing sentence of consecutive terms for felony murder and conspiracy to rob with a deadly weapon.

“We lost a good sweet sensitive person [who] was going to make a difference” in the world by working to fight cancer, his mother, Gwen Pitcairn, told Judge Peters, tearfully adding, “He never got that opportunity.”

Pitcairn’s mother, who was on the telephone with her son the night of July 25, 2010 as he was being stabbed to death while walking home from Penn Station, said she hoped “no other family will have to endure what we’ve been through.”

Wagner has been “lying to himself for so long he believes it,” she told the Voice and other reporters outside the courtroom following the sentencing. “Hopefully he will have time now to sit and think about what he’s done.”

‘BEST WE COULD’VE HOPED FOR’

“We got the best we could’ve hoped for,” the prosecutor in the case, Assistant State’s Attorney Joshua J. Felsen, told the Pitcairn Family, predicting that the defense would probably file an appeal but assuring the family that he didn’t think the Appeals Court judges would “reduce the sentence.”

Parole from a life sentence requires the consent of the governor, Felsen explained, which hasn’t happened since Parris Glendening left office in 2003.

“The Parole Board can recommend it,” he said, “but no governor has signed off since Glendening.” Maryland is one of only three states with such a law.

“Our whole family has been shattered,” Pitcairn’s sister Emily, in tears, told the court. “The family that I used to have isn’t there anymore.”

The case became an issue in the election campaign for state’s attorney during the summer of 2010 when challenger Gregg L. Bernstein chastised then-City State’s Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy for failing to prosecute repeat offenders like Wagner and allowing them to roam the streets to rob and kill as he did.

RELEASED SEVERAL TIMES

Wagner had been released several times and had not been prosecuted for violation of previous probations on convictions for assault and robbery.

Bernstein defeated Jessamy and is now Baltimore City State’s Attorney.

In a statement issued Friday following the sentencing, Bernstein said his office continued “to express our deepest condolences to the Pitcairn family and all of Stephen’s friends. While the verdict and sentence cannot bring him back, we hope that his family and friends will find some measure of closure in the result.

“This case is representative of the State’s Attorney’s Office continued efforts to successfully prosecute repeat violent offenders, and thereby make Baltimore a safer place.”

Wagner had been found not guilty of premeditated murder. His accomplice, 25-year-old girlfriend Lavelva Merritt, told the jury in August that Pitcairn was “our victim” but that she and Wagner had originally intended only to rob him, despite her admission that she “punched him in the head and took his [cell]phone” as he lay on the ground bleeding to death from her boyfriend’s stab wound.

ADDICTED TO CRACK COCAINE

The couple then returned to the one-bedroom apartment in Charles Village near the Johns Hopkins University campus they shared with six other adults, nearly all of whom are addicted to crack cocaine, to figure out how to use the credit card they found in Pitcairn’s wallet.

Police forensics experts identified bloodstains found on the front door of the apartment at 2607 Maryland Ave. as belonging to Pitcairn.

Merritt pleaded guilty to robbery and plea-bargained her way to what is expected to be two 15-year sentences with one term suspended. She is scheduled for sentencing Nov. 7.

“To lose a child is devastating,” Gwen Pitcairn told the court. “To hear your child murdered on the phone… is something I have to bear every day of my life.”

John Wagner has a sentence of life plus 20 years, she reminded reporters outside the courthouse.

“Our family has a death sentence every day.”
 
alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org