BALTIMORE — In a Baltimore courtroom one July afternoon, attorneys scrambled to make sense of the overlapping cases that brought Javarick Gantt to court.
Gantt, a deaf man who relied on sign language, had missed earlier hearings and failed to check in with his probation officer. His file listed an Indiana mailing address. His cases stalled amid pandemic restrictions and court closures.
Gantt explained his struggles navigating the bureaucracy of the Baltimore court system.
“I didn’t know anything. I was new to this,” he said through a courtroom interpreter. “This was my first time on probation. They didn’t tell me what to expect, what to do.”
His charges stemmed from a domestic dispute in which no one was seriously injured. But largely because he missed court dates and check-ins, he was ordered held without bail and remained behind bars.
Meanwhile, his trial was scheduled several months out and a probation violation hearing got pushed back twice, in part because of scheduling issues involving the necessary interpreters, court records show.
He wouldn’t live long enough to see his cases resolved.
Gantt was found unresponsive in the Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center on Oct. 9, less than a month before his 35th birthday — and his death was ruled a homicide by strangulation.
“This was a failure of the system,” said Debra Gardner, legal director of the Public Justice Center, a legal advocacy group. “The system is fraught with delays and that certainly had devastating consequences here.
“Plus, there is a constitutional duty to protect people if you’re going to deny their freedom.”
Last Friday, corrections officials announced charges against Gantt’s cellmate, Gordon Staron, 33, who was jailed in September on first-degree murder and other charges after his arrest in a deadly stabbing. He now faces another first-degree murder charge in Gantt’s death.
“This indicates a profoundly egregious mistake by the jail,” said Corene Kendrick, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit filed in the 1990s over treatment of people with disabilities in Central Booking. “There were major breakdowns in what should have happened here.”
The case exemplifies a confluence of problems plaguing the justice system in Baltimore, including an overreliance on pretrial detention, experts and advocates said. They said judges often leave defendants jailed for months — even on minor charges — while their cases crawl through the courts.
The practice has become more common since 2017, when bail reform measures sought to limit the use of cash bail because of its disparate impact on poor defendants. An unintended consequence of the effort: more people being held instead with no bail set, often for weeks or months before their cases are adjudicated, local research shows.
“The current system permits this. It finds ways to keep people in jail,” said Luciene Parsley, an attorney with Disability Rights Maryland. “People with disabilities are particularly vulnerable.”
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Loved ones said they worried about Gantt for several reasons, including his small stature. Just over 5 feet tall and about 105 pounds, he was often the target of bullies.
Sign language was Gantt’s primary language; his reading and writing skills were limited. He moved to Baltimore several years ago from Florida, leaving behind a robust support system.
In Baltimore, Gantt sometimes struggled to navigate public transportation and traverse a largely unfamiliar city, loved ones said.
He was arrested in early 2019 when police responded to a domestic dispute involving his ex-girlfriend. He spent less than a week in jail and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault. A judge placed him on probation.
So began his three-year entanglement with a system he struggled to comprehend.
In September 2019, Gantt was arrested again after a similar incident involving his former roommate. Police said Gantt entered a home without permission, groped her without consent and pushed her.
But the woman told The Baltimore Sun she believes that while Gantt was intoxicated and belligerent, he was not a serious threat.
After that arrest, Gantt spent about nine months incarcerated.
Then, amid a push to reduce jail and prison populations during the beginning of the pandemic, his public defender requested an emergency release, noting weak evidence and the fact that Gantt “effectively remains in isolation” behind bars because of his hearing disability. The case already had been delayed because of COVID-19 measures.
The motion was granted and Gantt was released on $50,000 unsecured bond in June 2020.
He never reported to his probation agent, according to court filings.
In October 2020, he missed a probation violation hearing and was issued a bench warrant. He missed other court dates, but the hearings were repeatedly postponed and his pending charges remained unresolved. Then in summer 2021, he was issued another bench warrant.
Nearly a year later, on July 1, Gantt was arrested on the two warrants.
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Days after his arrest, he appeared in Baltimore District Court, where Judge Diana Smith considered whether to keep him behind bars for the probation violation. Confusion over the timeline of Gantt’s overlapping cases, release dates and missed appearances took up much of the proceeding.
The bench warrant directed the court to hold Gantt without bail initially; the hearing gave Smith a chance to change that.
Gantt’s public defender said he never intentionally skipped court. When the judge allowed Gantt to speak through an interpreter, he said he was unaware of outstanding warrants and didn’t realize he needed to notify court officials whenever he moved.
The judge was unconvinced.
“I can’t fathom how someone would not know that they are on probation,” said Smith, adding that he had absconded “for a period of two years.” She ordered him to remain held without bail.
Smith declined to comment through a spokesperson for the Maryland court system.
At another bail review hearing the following day, a different public defender said Gantt probably missed court because of “a communication issue.”
Gantt participated via video conference from jail. In addition to a sign language interpreter, he received assistance from a second interpreter focused specifically on communicating with deaf people. Still, his attorney expressed concern about messages being lost in translation.
A spokesperson for the Maryland Office of the Public Defender declined to comment, citing confidentiality and attorney-client privilege.
Baltimore Circuit Judge Jeannie Hong ordered continued detention on the pending charges, which included burglary and misdemeanor sex assault.
“This court finds him a flight risk and a risk to deaf women in the community,” she said, noting that both cases involved deaf women.
Hong declined to comment for this story.
The court set an October trial date — meaning Gantt would spend three months behind bars in the meantime — after the prosecutor said the proceeding likely would take longer because of the interpreting process.
The probation violation issue was expected to be resolved faster, but it was delayed until after the other charges were resolved.
“Does that mean I stay in jail, Your Honor?” Gantt asked during a July 15 court appearance.
After the judge said yes, he responded: “OK, I will be patient.”
He was killed 10 days before his trial date.
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Experts said Gantt’s death illustrates a growing problem with pretrial detention in Baltimore, where more people are being held without bail.
That trend emerged after state officials adopted bail reform in 2017, when the Maryland Court of Appeals voted unanimously to overhaul the pretrial system, requiring judges to consider whether a defendant could afford bail before setting monetary conditions for release. The new rule followed an opinion from the state attorney general questioning the legality of setting cash bail without such consideration.
Criminal justice reform advocates praised the change, saying it would make the system more equitable. But now, they point to pretrial detention as an unintended consequence.
Even as arrests in Baltimore City have decreased since 2015, research from the University of Baltimore School of Law shows the number of defendants incarcerated pending trial has remained roughly the same. That’s largely because while fewer defendants are assigned money bail, more people are being held without bail being set, researchers found.
The average daily pretrial population of Central Booking rose to 786 last year from 672 in 2016, according to state corrections data.
Many people jailed pretrial ultimately have their charges dropped. The community organization Baltimore Action Legal Team released a report earlier this year focusing on the outcomes of cases in district court, which deals with misdemeanors and minor felonies.
The study found that about two-thirds of district court defendants held without bail until trial ended up having their cases dismissed. Researchers used 2019 data to avoid pandemic impacts. The data set included about 9,500 cases total; defendants were held without bail until trial in about 2,200 of them.
“In this system of holding people in jail before ultimately releasing them with no charges, where does the American ideal of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ fit in?” BALT researchers wrote.
Iman Freeman, BALT’s executive director, said the pretrial detention system needs another overhaul.
“Locking people up has always been the goal, and where is that getting us?” she said. “Too often, when people are arrested and jailed, they’re no longer treated as human beings deserving of compassion and care.”
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Officials with the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, which runs Baltimore’s jail, have declined to comment on Gantt’s housing assignment. But loved ones said he had safety concerns about his cellmate.
In general, detainees with disabilities are given a housing assignment based on several factors, including safety concerns, said agency spokesman Mark Vernarelli.
“Also, where possible, the detainee’s own preferences are considered,” he said. “Some prefer to be housed in general population areas; others are given special accommodations.”
But poor conditions are found throughout the jail, attorneys and advocates said.
In recent months, officials created makeshift sleeping quarters in the gymnasium because the jail was so crowded, according to a recent report prepared by attorneys for the ACLU for its class-action case. The lawsuit resulted in a settlement agreement in 2016 that includes ongoing monitoring requirements.
Conditions inside the medical and mental health units were found to be particularly egregious during a visit in August. That’s partly because the jail population recently grew from lower numbers seen during pandemic restrictions and court closures, the report found.
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Kiera Mayhew, Gantt’s close friend and former roommate, said she stayed in touch with him after his last July arrest. He had access to video call services in jail, so they could use sign language.
In the weeks before his death, Gantt became worried about his cellmate, saying he would prefer to be housed alone, his friend told The Sun this month. She said he sometimes tried to communicate with officers and other detainees using notes.
“He did not feel safe in jail without an interpreter,” Mayhew said. “He would just be alone a lot. … He didn’t want any drama or problems. He was frightened.”
She said Gantt was a good person despite the obstacles he faced. He was always smiling, loved playing with her children and helped out around the house. She said she watched him start crying when the police came to arrest him.
“When they took him away, that just broke my heart,” she said. “He was confused about the whole thing. He did not understand it.”
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