Commentary

Upon hearing news that Maryland’s highest court had disbarred him, Joe Cassilly said, “Oh, whatever.” I remember exactly what I was doing when I read that soaring bit of rhetoric from the former Harford County State’s Attorney: sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a copy of The Baltimore Sun on a Saturday morning in October 2021. To the allegation that he had intentionally withheld evidence that would have been favorable to the defense of a man convicted of murder in the 1980s — and lied about it for years — Cassilly said: “Oh whatever. I’m retired anyway.” To the court’s conclusion that he had violated both the defendant’s rights and the rules of professional conduct for attorneys, Cassilly made himself the victim.

Residents from across the state will make their way to Annapolis on Feb. 16 for Alzheimer’s Association’s Maryland Advocacy Day. Their mission is to let their legislators know how Alzheimer’s disease impacts their lives and to ask for support for three legislative priorities: community support for dementia caregivers, full funding of Maryland’s State Alzheimer’s Plan and expansion of existing services for seniors to age in place. These requests are personal. More than 110,000 Marylanders live with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia.

The COVID-19 pandemic delayed routine screenings and primary care visits, leading to worse health outcomes for many Marylanders and their families. Unfortunately, as we continue to emerge from the pandemic, health insurers are making matters worse and interfering with the relationship between patients and physicians by blocking access to critical and timely care. To alleviate these barriers, Maryland lawmakers must take action to help improve access to health care for patients, particularly those living with chronic conditions.

The brutal killing of Tyre Nichols is yet another example of police violence against Black people, and again raises the familiar question: What will it take to end it? In Maryland, let’s start with the truth. Five years ago, Eastern Shore teenager Anton Black died when police chased, tased, and pinned him facedown for six minutes. Led by then-Chief David Fowler, Maryland medical examiners ruled his death an “accident,” claiming Anton died of “natural” causes due to a heart condition, alleged drug use, and bipolar disorder. Despite video showing officers tasing, tackling and forcibly restraining Anton, the autopsy claimed “no evidence” linked police restraint to his death.

Maryland’s housing shortage has a state House committee taking notice as a veteran in Annapolis called on the Legislature to take action. Topics in the discussion included both renovation and renters. “As a committee and as a Legislature, we need to focus on the No. 1 problem, which is the lack of (housing) supply,” chair of the House Environment and Transportation Committee, Del. Kumar Barve, D-Montgomery, said during the hearing.

It is hardly a secret within America’s newsrooms that our profession has lost much of the public’s trust. Gallup, which has polled “Confidence in Institutions” for decades, found that, as of last summer, just 16% of Americans had either a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers — down from 25% a decade earlier and 35% in 2002. For TV news, the latest results were even worse. Only 11% of Americans trust it; 53% don’t. Most of us, in or out of the news media, would surely agree that this is a bad thing. We were a saner country when we could argue from a common set of uncontested facts. But we have a harder time agreeing on why trust in media collapsed and, more crucially, on how it can be restored.