Outrage after judge cuts sentence in Towson sex assault case

Scott Jones heard a startling scream one autumn evening in 2024. Outside, a man wearing only boxer shorts was chasing a woman in a pink T-shirt down his normally peaceful Towson street.

“What I saw with my own two eyes was him dragging her back up the street,” Jones recalled. Moments later, the woman, scraped and bruised, ran into Jones’ home, describing a date with one of his neighbors, Samuel Logue, that had spiraled into a violent assault.

Two years later, advocates say, an alarming new chapter is unfolding in this saga. A Baltimore County judge this month granted a request from Logue’s attorney to shorten his sentence. Survivors of sexual assault and their supporters question why a man who pleaded guilty to a brutal crime would get a break, while others convicted of less serious offenses don’t get such consideration.

Prosecutors requested a sentence at the top of the guidelines, which called for three to eight years in prison. Circuit Judge Mickey Norman originally sentenced Logue to five years and gave him credit for almost 21 months he spent in jail. But weeks later the judge changed the punishment to time served, though Logue will remain on supervised probation for four years.

“Every single thing about this is infuriating,” said Amanda Rodriguez, CEO of TurnAround Inc., which serves survivors of sexual assault. “It is astonishing to me that a survivor would get all the way to sentencing and have something like this happen. Why would you put yourself through all of that just to see justice not be served?”

According to prosecutors, the ordeal began when the woman connected with Logue on the dating app Hinge.

Throughout the day on Oct. 27, 2024, the woman hung out with Logue while he drank alcohol and took cocaine and pills, his attorney wrote in court documents. That night, the woman told police, Logue turned into a “lunatic.”

During an approximately three-hour attack, prosecutors alleged, Logue took off the woman’s pants and underwear, punched her in the face, choked her until she blacked out, sat on her for about 10 minutes, and sexually assaulted her. At one point, he forced the barrel of a BB rifle into her mouth and stated, “I could shoot you in five seconds,” prosecutors said.

Logue, 28, pleaded guilty June 11 in Baltimore County Circuit Court to first-degree assault and fourth-degree sex offense.

When the woman began reading her victim impact statement at sentencing July 27, she became overwhelmed. Prosecutors had to finish reciting it.

“The hardest part is knowing that I will never get back the person I was before this happened,” her statement read. “While this might be one chapter in his life, it has changed the course of mine forever.”

Logue said his behavior that night “in no way, shape or form properly represents the way I was raised to treat people with respect, especially women.”

“I know I can’t take back any of the pain or torment of the last two years that has come upon her,” he added, “but I hope that it helps to know it was never my intention to harm her in any way, shape or form.”

At sentencing, Assistant State’s Attorney Michael DeStefano said Logue had a “lifetime of treating women like objects and abusing substances in furtherance of that goal” and “caused a lot of terror in his wake.”

DeStefano said he had spoken to “seven different women who’ve alleged similar type of sexually assaultive behavior by Mr. Logue against them.”

Logue, a onetime standout swimmer who graduated from Loyola Blakefield, attended Washington and Lee University from 2016 to 2019. There, he led a woman upstairs at a fraternity party while drunk, pinned her against a wall and forcibly tried to have sex with her, DeStefano alleged.

Though DeStefano claimed Logue was kicked out of the Virginia college, his attorney said he left to be closer to his ailing mother. Logue graduated in 2021 from Loyola University with a bachelor’s degree in finance.

An ex-girlfriend asserted that Logue raped her multiple times in 2023 after both of them were drinking to excess, DeStefano said. Logue, he alleged, openly admitted to having sex with her after she passed out but claimed he was allowed because they were dating.

Logue’s attorney, Brian Thompson, told the judge his client has significant mental health issues that are exacerbated by drugs and alcohol. He said Logue also experienced trauma from the death of his mother, who had Parkinson’s disease, in September 2021.

Thompson said he was not going to go “tit for tat” with prosecutors about other allegations that never were subjected to adversarial court proceedings.

He said his client does not remember much of the October 2024 attack. Logue partied all day with the woman before inviting her to his home, where they continued drinking, Thompson said.

“This was not going to end well from its inception,” Thompson said.

At sentencing, Norman, a retired judge and former Maryland State Police trooper who still sits as a judge a few days each month, said he would likely modify Logue’s sentence after he got a taste of prison. That’s because jail, in comparison, the judge said, is a “Taj Mahal.”

“You just said a few minutes ago that you’ve been scared to death,” Norman told Logue. “Well, you’ve never been as scared as you’re gonna be.”

Ten days later, Logue’s attorney asked for the lighter sentence.

Prosecutors argued against that request during a hearing Sept. 14 and called the idea of reducing the sentence “an affront to deterrence.”

“Nothing has changed with this defendant,” Assistant State’s Attorney Zarena Sita said. “The only thing that has changed is the victim’s trust in this system. Because she no longer has any.”

In an interview, Thompson said he was sorry for what the woman endured and noted his client accepted responsibility. Even with the original sentence, Logue, he said, would have been eligible for parole in a few months after serving half his time.

The Baltimore County Courtroom Observer first reported on the case.

Former judge Andre Davis, who served in state and federal courts, said he’s glad the system allows for sentence modifications. The key is how, and when, that’s done.

Logue is white, and Davis, who is not involved in the case, questioned whether nonviolent offenders of color are offered the same deference.

“Longtime practitioners in Baltimore County, particularly Black lawyers representing Black defendants, will recognize the seeming disparity in the treatment of this individual compared to many other nonwhite defendants in Baltimore County,” he said.

Logue is not yet free. He’s being held without bail in Harford County Detention Center, pending a hearing Nov. 17 to determine whether he violated his probation in a 2023 burglary case.

In Towson, Jones, the neighbor who witnessed the attack, often finds his thoughts returning to that troubling night. That’s when he said his neighbor’s home turned into a “house of horrors.”

Said Jones: “This night out wasn’t supposed to end that way.”