Charles Village Court Watch

Nelson Bernard Clifford is charged with a home invasion rape allegedly committed on November 10, 2011 in the 3700 block of Greenmount Avenue.  According to new reports, he was identified from DNA.  I should note too that Clifford is also charged with a home invasion rape in Reservoir Hill and with an attempted rape, but it appears from the online court files that the one that will be tried first is the one on Greenmount Avenue. My wife Janet Wright had attended a previous preliminary motion hearing in this case when I was doubled up, so she wanted to follow up with me today.

However, another trial is taking longer than expected, and the court clerk informed us that the trial would be delayed at least one day.

We left the courthouse, crossed Fayette Street and then tried to cross St. Paul Street.  We were in the crosswalk and had the green light and a walk signal, when suddenly a tour bus tried to make a left turn from Fayette Street onto St. Paul Street.  I suddenly saw it and yelled to Janet to try to get out of the way.  The bus hit Janet and knocked her down a few feet into the street.  Fortunately, it came to a stop before it would have run us over.

Janet was in excruciating pain, both in her head and in her back where the bus had hit her.

Everyone did a fabulous job.  A police officer got the bus moved so an ambulance would be able to get in there, investigated the accident, got information from the driver of the bus, and at Shock Trauma, provided me with the information I would need to get an accident report.  Other police directed traffic.  The firefighters and paramedics made Janet as comfortable as possible given that they had to be sure that there would be no further injury, especially since they did not know whether there might be a fracture or spinal injury.

At Shock Trauma, Janet was x-rayed and given a CAT scan.  Fortunately, no bones were fractured and her nerves are intact. 
Finally, once it had been determined the only injury to Janet was soft tissue damage, she was given pain medication.  By 4 p.m., she was able to walk, and we left the hospital with the necessary prescriptions.

I say all this to tell people that we in Baltimore City have excellent first responders and excellent emergency medicine at Shock Trauma.  I am thankful that Janet's injuries were not a lot worse.  I really cannot say enough about the quality of the care that Janet received today.  Despite all our city's problems, we can be proud to have some of the best first responders and the best emergency medical care in the world.

For tomorrow, I probably will stay home to help Janet recover.  If the trial of Nelson Clifford is a jury trial, we can expect that what will occur will be some more pretrial motions followed by jury selection.  Of course, there are also a lot of other possibilities, and I will check online to see if anything else has materialized.