Crime: Looking For A Few Good Snitches

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Julian and other public defenders say the intimidation threat is overhyped, that the real reason witnesses don't testify is that the citizens of Baltimore have lost faith in the city's justice system, particularly the scandal-racked police force. A special rapid-reaction unit called a flex squad in the southwestern district was disbanded in December after one of its officers was accused of raping a detained woman before setting her free. A search of the precinct building turned up stashed narcotics and counterfeit DVDs. The charges came after years of rumored misconduct, and critics in the media say police brass let the unit continue to function primarily because the department's code of silence is not that much different from the one on the streets. "How will the department look now when any of its spokesmen speak out against things like the Stop Snitching DVDs, T shirts and caps?" wrote Baltimore Sun columnist Gregory Kane.

Some prosecutors acknowledge that the deep suspicion of the city's criminal-justice system is a major stumbling block. "Building trust at the grass-roots level would go a long way toward solving these witness issues," says homicide prosecutor Lisa Goldberg. But, prosecutors say, they simply don't have the luxury of waiting for that bond with the community to develop before trying to convict criminals. In the absence of trust, sometimes the only solution is to put as much pressure on witnesses as the thugs do.

That's where Sam Bowden, 34, and Byron Conaway, 30, come in. The former undercover narcotics detectives were assigned to the state's attorney's office full time in September 2004. Since then they have been assigned to serve more than 300 summonses and body attachments (special incarceration warrants for witnesses who don't want to be found). It can be a maddening chase at times. Wearing baggy street clothes with Kevlar vests underneath, the two troll the city's grim row houses looking for witnesses who are, as often as not, "in the game" themselves, part of the same shadowy and dangerous criminal class as the defendants. Even thugs are often afraid of what will happen if they are forced to testify, so Bowden and Conaway try to handle all their witnesses as gently as possible. "You do feel bad sometimes," says Bowden. "But these are important witnesses. These trials need to happen."

Nearly all states have a statute that allows judges to jail material witnesses to major crimes. "Somewhere in the deep core of American law is the notion that judges have a right to aggressively enforce court orders," says Stanford University law professor Robert Weisberg. "Witnesses are, in that sense, like defendants. People may think that one is the good guy and the other is the bad guy, but they both need to be in court for the legal system to work." Even if the jailed witness changes testimony on the stand--and prosecutor Goldberg says she can't remember a murder trial in which someone hasn't backtracked on his or her story--the witness's mere presence in court allows the prosecutors to admit earlier statements pointing toward the defendant's guilt.