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	Lawyers Vow to Keep Child Rapist Imprisoned By Tricia Bishop Baltimore Sun August 3, 2010 http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-08-02/news/bs-md-merzbacher-legal-20100802_1_john-joseph-merzbacher-elizabeth-ann-murphy-plea-deal John Joseph Merzbacher will not leave prison any time soon, state prosecutors said Monday, vowing to keep the convicted child rapist behind bars despite a federal ruling that he be offered a plea deal from 1994. Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy pledged Monday to preserve justice "for the victims," and the Maryland attorney general's office promised to appeal the ruling. "It's safe to say we're done considering," Raquel Guillory, a spokeswoman for the attorney general's office, said in an e-mail. "We will." Meanwhile, a retired judge explained the rationale behind the plea deal for the first time Monday. Judge Clifton J. Gordy justified the offer, saying there was little physical evidence and that too much time had elapsed by the time the charges were brought. The legal moves surrounding Merzbacher were prompted by a 72-page opinion handed down late Friday by federal appeals court Judge Andre M. Davis. It requires that the Baltimore Circuit Court give Merzbacher, who has long maintained his innocence, a chance to accept a 10-year plea deal that was supposed to have been offered to him in 1994 — an oversight that violated his Sixth Amendment right to effective counsel, Davis concluded. Merzbacher, a former teacher at the Catholic Community School accused of terrorizing dozens of children, has spent 15 years in prison, which means his punishment will have been long past paid if he is offered and accepts the deal. It's a chilling prospect for some of Merzbacher's former students, who thought they were safe after he was convicted of raping Elizabeth Ann Murphy in the mid-1970s and sentenced to four life terms. Several of them vowed to reopen their closed cases, which were dropped after the 1995 conviction, if Merzbacher is released. Meanwhile, attorneys not affiliated with the case theorized about whether the ruling could be carried out, particularly because it requires a Baltimore judge to agree to honor the deal. Appellate court specialist Erin Murphy Ehman, who reviewed the ruling at The Baltimore Sun's request, said Davis' opinion was "very thorough" as well as "intellectually honest" by acknowledging that a city judge would have to make an unpopular decision to fulfill the order. "The defendant is going to have a very difficult time finding a judge who is willing at this point to agree to the deal," said Ehman's colleague, Andrew White, a partner in the Baltimore firm of Silverman, Slutkin, Thompson, White LLC
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