Crime: Looking For A Few Good Snitches

Still, John Glynn, the circuit-court judge who signs many of the city's body attachments, says the system works better when witnesses testify voluntarily instead of being coerced by the court. "It's a battle of who can control the witness--the state or the street," he says. "And justice suffers when that happens." Baltimore, like many state and local governments, lacks the resources to protect witnesses after they have testified. The Baltimore witness-assistance program used to be called witness protection, but with a shoestring budget and local motels doubling as witness safe houses, officials realized they couldn't always live up to the protection promise. Unlike the federal witness-protection program for turncoat mobsters and cocaine kingpins, there is no reconstructive surgery, no house with a pool in suburban Phoenix. Baltimore authorities had to stretch their $400,000 annual budget in 2005 to accommodate 184 families in hiding--a few with as many as 11 members. Although some are relocated near family as far away as California, most are loath to leave Maryland and wind up languishing in motels just outside the city limits. "I wish we could just make our witnesses more comfortable," says Goldberg. "We need a lot more money."

U.S. Senator Charles Schumer of New York reintroduced a bill this month that would help. It would provide nearly $100 million in federal funding to help local and state governments protect witnesses. Inspired by the murder of a crime witness in Brooklyn in 2002, the bill foundered when it was first submitted three years ago, but Schumer says the issue is too important to give up on. "Every day, witnesses who are willing to stand up in court and testify about a violent crime in their community put their lives on the line for the sake of justice," said Schumer. "The very least we can do is protect them."

That promise is too distant for the very present danger Alvin Chalmers faces. His pleading with detectives Conaway and Bowden in the car on the way to central booking has fallen on deaf ears, so Chalmers takes a new tack, rehearsing what he will probably say on the stand. "I was high when it happened," he says over and over. "I don't remember anything."