Lock him up

OPINION:

Just when you thought the case of a Liberian accused of child-rape charges in Montgomery County couldn’t get any more bizarre, it does. Mahamu Kanneh failed to show up last Friday for a hearing in Rockville. Now he sits in a Philadelphia jail awaiting an extradition hearing to determine whether he will be returned to Maryland. It is ironic, to say the least, that Mr. Kanneh spent exactly one night in jail since his initial August 2004 arrest and was released on a mindbogglingly low $10,000 bond on charges of repeatedly molesting the child. Because he skipped his court hearing and fled the state, Mr. Kanneh has just spent his fourth night behind bars in Philadelphia, where he will remain until Wednesday, when Philadelphia prosecutors will attempt to extradite him back to Maryland.

What makes Mr. Kanneh’s flight so strange is the fact that until he snuck out of town, virtually all of the peculiar twists in the case worked to his benefit. First, there was Maryland’s speedy trial law, requiring that defendants be tried within 180 days of an indictment. Mr. Kanneh initially waived this right to that so his attorneys could analyze DNA evidence. Then, the trial date was extended repeatedly as his defense team fought it out with prosecutors over Mr. Kanneh’s demand for an interpreter who could translate Vai, an obscure language spoken by just 100,000 people worldwide. Defense attorneys insisted on an interpreter even though Mr. Kanneh attended and graduated from schools in the county, and he spoke to his neighbors and the police in English. But after a court-appointed psychiatrist recommended that he get an interpreter, various county judges began searching in vain for a Vai translator.

They located someone, but Circuit Court Judge Katherine Savage had lost patience, and she decided to dismiss charges because Mr. Kanneh had been forced to wait too long to go to trial. The one bit of good news in all of this is that Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy appealed Judge Savage’s ruling, and Mr. Kanneh was supposed to appear in court one week ago for a hearing on conditions for his release. The state’s attorney’s office urged the judge to bar the defendant from having contact with children and said he should be forced to surrender his passport and wear an ankle bracelet, among other things. Mr. Kanneh’s attorneys objected that these conditions were far too strict and that he was not a flight risk, of course. But as the Sheriff’s Department has pointed out, Mr. Kanneh appeared to have packed up his belongings and moved to Philadelphia and attempted to flee from police there.

Mahamu Kanneh has demonstrated beyond any doubt that he is a flight risk. Once he is returned to Rockville, prosecutors should request that he be held without bond. We hope that Circuit Court Judge Ann Harrington has the good sense to agree.