The nightmare that turned Tahirah Williams’ life upside down started with something so petty it never should have ended up in court.
A perpetually aggrieved neighbor became enraged about a delivery van blocking her driveway and blamed Williams, a 47-year-old grandmother of seven who runs a home day care in Northeast Baltimore.
Baltimore Police responded and determined that no crime was committed. Just a run-of-the-mill dispute among neighbors.
They left. Everyone went home.
But that wasn’t good enough for the neighbor. And because of an unusual provision in Maryland law, she was able to bend the criminal legal system to her will.
More than 2 1/2 months after the spat over the delivery van, Williams’ neighbor filed a rambling four-page diatribe with a district court commissioner, a judicial officer who can approve criminal charges and issue arrest warrants without input from police or prosecutors.
Police returned to the neighborhood to arrest Williams, who was blindsided. She told them that the other cops had cleared her of any wrongdoing. But there was nothing the officers could do. They handcuffed her, loaded her into the back of a wagon and hauled her off to jail.
Williams sat in a cell for about three days until a judge released her on bail. She waited weeks for prosecutors to drop the meritless charges.
“It changed my life forever,” Williams said.
The district court commissioner system was intended to give people greater access to justice, and advocates argue that it can play a critical role in helping some survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.
But the decades-old legal process has few safeguards, and Maryland stands out because of how much leeway it gives everyday people to initiate charges.
About this series
This is the first story in a series investigating a system that allows people to seek criminal charges on their own in Maryland with no input from police or prosecutors.
• Part II: 5 Marylanders caught in a system where you could be ‘locked up on a person’s word’
• Part III: How Maryland could fix a system that lets anyone seek criminal charges and upend lives
• Previously: How a woman in Baltimore was able to file criminal charges against rapper T.I.
The Banner interviewed more than 100 people and reviewed court records, courtroom audio recordings and body camera video over several months and found the system can be easily abused and wreak havoc on people’s lives.
The victims include neighbors like Williams as well as famous people such as a multi-platinum-selling rapper and the mayor of Baltimore.
Many are forced to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees to defend themselves. Others lose their jobs, and some suffer permanent reputational harm.
Through this arcane procedure, thousands of people every year are thrust into the criminal legal system. Meanwhile, those who file frivolous or false applications for charges are rarely punished.
“I see so many lives absolutely ruined,” said Latoya Francis-Williams, an attorney in Randallstown whose specialties include criminal defense. “Unfortunately, unless you are subjected to this swift, unjust process, you don’t really get the gravity about how it erodes the entire criminal justice system.”
The process as it stands is “ridiculously problematic,” said Jeremy Eldridge, a defense attorney and former assistant state’s attorney in Baltimore.
“It is the most dangerous and abused system we have ever created,” Eldridge said.
‘I was in disbelief that it actually happened to me’
Williams’ ordeal began on Nov. 20, 2023.
The neighbor, Carvet Carlyle, complained to the police that a delivery van was blocking her driveway, and, for reasons that are still unclear, she blamed Williams.
Carlyle then alleged that Williams and two other women had assaulted her.
“I’m going to have a warrant taken out for you!” Carlyle yelled from the street. “You better get your lawyer. You better get your lawyer, bitch!”
Baltimore Police body camera video shows Carvet Carlyle yelling at Williams in 2023. (Baltimore Police Department)
Police talked to several other neighbors and ultimately determined there was no assault. Williams thought the issue was resolved.
Then on Feb. 12, 2024, Officer Christopher Henard walked up the steps to Williams’ home as a parent picked up two children from her day care. “Tahirah Williams?” Henard asked. “Is that you?”
He had a warrant for her arrest.
Carlyle had applied for charges with a district court commissioner, who could only consider the account she provided in the paperwork and swore was true under penalties of perjury.
Only in rare cases must prosecutors investigate and make a recommendation before charges are filed: when people accuse law enforcement, emergency services personnel or educators of committing a crime in the course of their duties.
Police serve an arrest warrant on Williams more than 2 1/2 months after a disagreement with her neighbor. (Baltimore Police Department)
That means in Williams’ case, the district court commissioner issued charges without reviewing the findings of the officers who responded to the dispute with her neighbor.
The rambling, handwritten narrative that Carlyle filed repeated her earlier allegations but added new grievances.
Carlyle also claimed, without evidence, that Williams busted out the front windshield of her truck, set her mail on fire and put her at risk of having a stroke.
Williams was stunned. None of that was true, she said, yet she now faced charges including second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and making an arson threat.
“Oh my God. This has got to be a dream,” Williams told Henard. “No way this is happening in real life.”
Officers handcuffed Williams and placed her in the back of a police wagon.
Police then took her to the Baltimore Central Booking & Intake Center, where she appeared before a different district court commissioner.
Despite the fact that Williams did not have a criminal record and had never been arrested, District Court Commissioner Kayla Boulware ordered her held without bond.
She immediately started sobbing.
“With no proof of anything?” Williams asked. “I can just go and say, ‘Well, this person hit me,’ and you can lock ’em up?”
“That’s how it is,” Boulware replied.
“We got to go by what’s in the four corners of your document,” Boulware added, referencing Carlyle’s application for charges.
Correctional officers handed Williams a pink jumpsuit, socks and oversize sneakers with no shoelaces.
They led her upstairs to a cold, concrete cell with a dirty floor. Inside, Williams met her cellmate — a woman who told her that she’d been picked up on seven outstanding warrants. When Williams tried to use the sink and toilet, the water pressure was so low she thought they were broken.
Meals came and went, but she couldn’t bring herself to eat the bologna sandwiches, boiled eggs or handfuls of dry cereal. At night, sleep was nearly impossible. Instead of climbing into the bunk bed, she perched on a plastic storage bin.
The jail pulsed with noise: screaming, pounding on doors and windows, voices echoing down the hall.
Valentine’s Day was approaching, and Williams thought about the party she had planned for her day care children. She had already bought materials for arts and crafts.
Her daughter, Tiara Austin, told the little ones that Williams was on vacation.
In reality, Williams was appearing via video before a judge who would decide whether she’d have to stay in jail until trial.
Assistant State’s Attorney Dalton Warren repeated some of her neighbor’s claims and pushed for Williams to be held without bond, arguing she posed a “serious continuing threat to the safety of the victim.”
Williams’ attorney John Cox fired back.
“Your honor,” Cox said, “this is, quite frankly, the epitome of what’s wrong with the commissioner system.”
Cox said it took him less than three hours of research to discover that Carlyle was a serial filer. She sought charges against other people on nine previous occasions, he said, and none of those cases ended with a conviction.
“This woman is not stable,” Cox said. “And yet we still have this system where there’s no checks and balances for someone who can just go and levy charges against someone that aren’t substantiated, that have no investigation, and the state’s attorney will just parrot it like it’s real.”
Cox said his client’s livelihood and well-being were being threatened. He made a prediction: “This is going to end up in a dismissal.”
Baltimore District Judge Mark F. Scurti released Williams on a $15,000 unsecured bond, so she did not have to put up any money.
Williams said she got out of jail at 4 a.m., about three days after she was arrested. She had barely slept.
“I was in disbelief that it actually happened to me,” she said, “and it was all a lie.”
But Williams’ troubles were not over. The state suspended her child care license for 45 days in an emergency action after receiving a complaint related to her arrest.
Meanwhile, Williams went to a district court commissioner and obtained charges of harassment against Carlyle and her husband, Howard McDonald. Prosecutors dismissed the cases against the couple.
Nearly two months after police arrested Williams, the state dropped all the charges that remained against her.
‘The system in Maryland is broken’
The Maryland Judiciary does not keep statewide data on conviction rates for cases initiated by people outside law enforcement.
Frederick County is one of the few places that track outcomes. The state’s attorney’s office reported that about 88% of these cases in 2024 did not result in a conviction.
“This mousetrap isn’t catching any mice,” Frederick County State’s Attorney Charlie Smith said. “If you have a process that fails 90% of the time, that’s a bad process.”
Wicomico County State’s Attorney Jamie Dykes said her office reviewed 482 cases from 2024 in which people obtained charges from a district court commissioner.
Prosecutors, she said, dropped 191 cases because of insufficient evidence.
Only 59 — less than 13% — ended in a conviction.
“You affect people’s lives and their confidence in the criminal justice system,” Dykes said. “It doesn’t result in justice.”
Everyday people sought criminal charges in Wicomico County hundreds of times in 2024
District court commissioners approved the vast majority of applications for charges. The cases rarely resulted in a conviction.
Of 564 applications not filed by police in 2024:
Commissioners approved charges in 482 cases.
Commissioners denied 82 of the applications.
Prosecutors moved forward on 291 cases.
Prosecutors dropped 191 cases due to insufficient evidence.
Just 59 cases resulted in a conviction.
232 cases did not result in a conviction.
Commissioners approved charges in 482 cases.
Commissioners denied 82 of the applications.
Prosecutors moved forward on 291 cases.
Prosecutors dropped 191 cases due to insufficient evidence.
Just 59 cases resulted in a conviction.
232 cases did not result in a conviction.
People can spend weeks if not months in jail before their case is resolved, Maryland Public Defender Natasha Dartigue said.
Even if the charges are eventually dropped, it takes people time to clear their records, Dartigue said.
“We often take the attitude that on the back end it’s resolved, so it’s OK,” Dartigue said. “We should really be focusing our attention on the front end, so it’s not happening in the first place.”
Dartigue is one of the co-chairs of the Maryland Equitable Justice Collaborative, which addressed district court commissioners in a 105-page report about racial disparities in the criminal legal system.
“The system in Maryland is broken,” said Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, the other co-chair of the collaborative. “And while I think it’s designed to allow access to justice, if you will, by victims of crimes, I don’t think it’s serving the values or the goals of a fair and equitable justice system.”
Research by the Vera Institute of Justice, a national nonprofit criminal justice advocacy group based in New York, found that Maryland is one of eight states that give everyday people the most latitude to initiate charges.
More than one-third of states do not permit this practice.
Maryland is also more permissive than neighboring states.
In Pennsylvania, people can file what’s called a private criminal complaint, but the district attorney must approve any misdemeanor or felony charges.
Lawmakers in Delaware in 2022 formally abolished people’s ability to seek arrest warrants.
“The people of this state are actually safer,” said Delaware Justice of the Peace Court Chief Magistrate Alan Davis, who made eliminating the power one of his main priorities and pushed for the legislation.
‘You’re not the judge or jury’
Maryland has almost 300 district court commissioners.
They come from a variety of professional backgrounds. Some are retired police officers or former parole and probation agents. Others have never worked in the criminal legal system.
The job requires a bachelor’s degree, though it can be in any field.
The administrative judge of each district, with the approval of the chief judge of the District Court of Maryland, appoints them. They earn a base salary of $67,218 plus benefits.
The other responsibilities of district court commissioners include advising people who’ve been arrested of the charges against them, explaining their rights and deciding whether they get released.
District court commissioners also issue peace and protective orders after business hours and determine if people qualify for a public defender.
If they approve charges, district court commissioners alone decide whether to issue a summons to appear in court or an arrest warrant.
“You’re not the judge or jury. You’re just there to see if there’s enough for probable cause to move it forward,” said Tim Biggerstaff, a former district court commissioner in Caroline and Talbot counties.
They move almost all of these cases forward.
In fact, district court commissioners in 2024 approved more than 93% of all applications for charges from both law enforcement and everyday people.
“You can walk down there and allege Barack Obama slapped you, and they’ll issue a warrant,” said Tony Garcia, a defense attorney and former assistant state’s attorney in Baltimore.
In Baltimore, a customer left a Giant without paying for a 5-cent paper bag, got into a brawl with an employee at the grocery store, then convinced a district court commissioner to charge the worker with second-degree assault.
In Wicomico County, a district court commissioner issued an arrest warrant for someone named Vernon. No last name, no address, no date of birth.
And in Montgomery County, a woman whose brother died in a shooting in 2002 was convinced she knew who did it.
Police and prosecutors informed her there was insufficient evidence to bring charges. But she visited a district court commissioner and obtained arrest warrants for three people on charges including first-degree murder.
Prosecutors dropped the charges — but not until after police arrested them.
Famous artists and elected officials have even faced charges.
In 2024, a woman went to a district court commissioner and sought charges against Clifford Harris Jr., better known as the rapper T.I.
“I have been going through a lot of stalking and harassment from this individual,” Crystal Gorham wrote in an application seeking charges. “I was threatened to be murdered by this individual.”
A district court commissioner issued an arrest warrant for the three-time Grammy Award-winning artist on charges including first- and second-degree assault and use of a handgun during the commission of a crime of violence.
Law enforcement later arrested T.I. at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. His arrest made national headlines.
Eventually, it would come out that Gorham had never met the rapper.
Prosecutors scrambled to recall the warrant and drop the charges.
When Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott was running for his first term in 2020, a campaign volunteer for Sheila Dixon, one of his opponents, punched him outside the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture before a forum.
Police moved to charge the volunteer, Michael Moore, with second-degree assault. Dixon fired him.
Less than two weeks later, Moore went to a district court commissioner and alleged that Scott actually attacked him.
Scott was charged with second-degree assault.
A special assistant state’s attorney for Baltimore, Steven Kroll, eventually dropped both cases.
Scott said the situation was ridiculous because surveillance cameras had captured the incident.
At the time, Scott was president of the Baltimore City Council. He said he had to go to court, spending time away from his job.
He’s wondered what might have happened if there had not been any video.
“I want to be very clear: We have to have a system that allows people to protect themselves and their families,” Scott said. “But we also have to have fail-safes in place that doesn’t allow that to be exploited.”
‘It’s like the use of a nuclear weapon’
Wendy Auen graduated from Towson University in 2002 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and anthropology.
She landed her first real job out of college as a district court commissioner in Montgomery County, where she stayed for about 18 years.
Her previous employment experience consisted of lifeguarding, waitressing at Outback Steakhouse and working security at Lord & Taylor.
“It’s a lot of authority to give to people that have the expectation of a judge, but don’t have the qualifications of a judge,” said Auen, now a real estate agent. “Even though I appreciated my time there, and I have a lifetime of friends, it’s a stupid system.”
The director of commissioners in Maryland, Tim Haven, said some people know they can make certain allegations that are more likely to result in serious charges and an arrest warrant.
Haven establishes policies for district court commissioners and reports to, among others, the chief judge of the District Court of Maryland.
These abuses of the system, he said, are horrible, but they won’t stop unless false statements have consequences.
“It really comes down to a lying-to-the-commissioner issue,” Haven said.
The Banner found only five cases from 2024 in which people accused of making false statements to a district court commissioner were charged with perjury.
Only one resulted in a conviction — for a lesser crime.
“It’s like the use of a nuclear weapon, if there were no consequences for the user but a lot of consequences for the victim or target,” said Sean Mukherjee, Montgomery County’s district public defender.
‘All victims should have access to the courts’
Though many states do not allow people to pursue charges on their own, advocates argue that the system in Maryland provides a critical option for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault who might be reluctant to seek help from law enforcement.
If people do contact police, many times the cops suggest they seek charges with a district court commissioner.
Some officers are wonderful, said Lisae Jordan, executive director and counsel for the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault. But she said others do not want to deal with complicated cases or lack the resources to fully investigate them.
The ability of survivors to go to a district court commissioner and immediately obtain an arrest warrant for their abuser can be “crucial and lifesaving,” Jordan said. If prosecutors were first required to review these allegations, she said, “people would get killed.”
Many of these cases are difficult to prove in court. But that does not mean the allegations are untrue, Jordan said.
“All victims should have access to the courts if a crime was committed, whether they can prove it or not,” Jordan said.
Kurt Wolfgang, executive director of the Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center, said police make their own subjective judgments about credibility.
The ability to bypass them and potentially let a judge or jury decide who’s telling the truth is important, Wolfgang said.
Several state’s attorneys also see value in the system, despite its flaws.
“The concept that citizens have a right to, in a sense, protect themselves, and right a wrong, needs to be protected,” Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger said. “But there needs to be checks and balances.”
The process can also backfire and harm survivors.
Sometimes, they end up getting arrested because their abuser goes to a district court commissioner and obtains charges, said Saraah Lang, senior supervising attorney of the Rebuild, Overcome, and Rise Center at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.
Competing sets of charges, Lang said, complicate matters. Prosecutors sometimes ask both people to plead guilty or invoke their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in exchange for dismissing the cases.
‘We absolutely will look at it again next year’
Lawmakers have considered a bill to change the system during the past two legislative sessions.
Del. Jackie Addison, a Democrat from Baltimore, introduced the legislation, which would have prohibited district court commissioners from issuing an arrest warrant to someone other than a police officer or state’s attorney.
The measure would have also increased the maximum sentence for making a false statement from six months to three years in prison.
The bill did not make it out of committee.
Addison said she’s pursuing similar legislation again in the next session, which begins in January.
The new bill would still allow district court commissioners to issue arrest warrants in certain cases brought by people alleging domestic violence.
State’s attorneys, she said, would then have 48 hours to review the claims and decide whether to prosecute. The legislation would also increase the maximum sentence for making a false statement from six months to one year in prison.
Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates supports the proposal, which he’s referred to as “the T.I. bill.”
Bates said the ability for people to pursue charges on their own has always caused him concern. He said abuses of the system create distrust.
“We’ve had so many individuals who’ve been true victims of domestic violence,” Bates said. “And then you do see some individuals that have tried to use that process in a selfish manner.”
The chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Del. Luke Clippinger, a Democrat from Baltimore, wondered why state’s attorneys aren’t prosecuting more people who abuse the system for perjury.
“This is an important issue that we need to look at, and we absolutely will look at it again next year,” Clippinger said.
State Sen. Will Smith, a Democrat from Montgomery County and the chair of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, said he suspects that the legislation will come back and “we’ll definitely look at it.”
‘I was guilty until proven innocent’
More than 1 1/2 years later, Williams, the day care owner, said she still suffers from insomnia and becomes emotional whenever she thinks about what happened.
Eventually, Williams said, she got her license back and 15 out of 16 children returned to her day care. But by then, she had exhausted her savings.
“Basically, I was guilty until proven innocent,” she said.
Even the officers who responded to the parking complaint immediately suspected that her neighbor was not telling the truth.
“She’s lying,” Officer Leonel Lopez said at the scene. “She’s lying all the way.”
One of these days, Lopez said, he was going to take her to court for making a false report.
She was never charged.
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