Can Scott Shellenberger hold on to the Baltimore County state’s attorney’s office?

Every morning, Scott Shellenberger rises at 5:15 a.m. He eats half an English muffin and some yogurt. He’s at his Towson office by 7:20, dressed in a dark suit. Lunch, at his desk, is always chicken — a dish he cooked or a premade Wegmans wrap. After an evening of campaigning, he’s home at 8 p.m. to eat the chicken dinner he made the Sunday before — and in bed by 10.

Shellenberger, 67, is a creature of routine. Elected Baltimore County state’s attorney in 2006, he’s hoping voters like the predictability he brings to the office. A Baltimore native and father of two, he only ever had three employers as an adult: the government, the law offices of Peter Angelos, and Kmart, where he worked a summer job.

“I love my job, and I love leading the people who are keeping the citizens of Baltimore County safe,” Shellenberger said.

Elected five times, Shellenberger faces the toughest race of his career this year. Two experienced prosecutors, Sarah David and Lauren Lipscomb, are challenging him for the job.

Both women criticize Shellenberger’s style, saying the office is not modern enough. And both revived longtime accusations that Shellenberger has been reluctant to prosecute sexual assault cases.

Countering criticism

Shellenberger bristles at the modernity dig. He started, after all, in an age before the internet, and now many trials include video evidence. He wonders if it’s simply an attempt to call him old.

He and all his prosecutors use laptops and communicate constantly by phone. Shellenberger himself is accessible at all hours; rather than employing a media office, he answers his cellphone. He says he hasn’t taken a vacation in a decade. When he went fishing with friends in Ocean City recently, he brought his briefcase on the boat.

Shellenberger concedes that sexual assault cases are among the toughest to prosecute. Victims often wait days, even months, to report a crime. Often there are no witnesses and the parties involved offer conflicting accounts. These are the issues that juries have raised after he’s lost those kinds of cases, he said.

“That’s very difficult to make a jury understand,” he said.

He also has faced criticism for declining to prosecute baseball players at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, for allegedly raping five women in a 2017 sexual assault case. Shellenberger said at the time the allegations did not meet the “element of force or incapacitation as prescribed by statute.”

One of the women, Anna Borkowski, tried to file charges through the district court system. Shellenberger sent police officers to her home to dissuade her. Ultimately, the county paid Borkowski and her attorneys $100,000 to settle a class-action lawsuit she filed alongside the four other women. They accused the county of mishandling sexual assault complaints, treating women reporting sex crimes with “indifference and disrespect,” and intimidating women who report.

A federal judge ultimately threw out all the claims except for Borkowski’s, which was settled out of court.

Shellenberger says he was trying to protect Borkowski from being charged for making a frivolous complaint.

Next Tuesday, May 26, a Baltimore County District Court judge will hear from a former Randallstown resident who’s asking the court to appoint an outside prosecutor, rather than Shellenberger or one of his deputies, to hold accountable the man she alleges raped her three times in 2018.

Former Baltimore County Executive Don Mohler has known Shellenberger for decades and considers him a personal friend, but supports David in the race.

“I think that after a period of time every office benefits from a new, fresh perspective, and I believe Sarah will bring that,” he said. “I think she will modernize the office and upgrade the use of technology. I think that she will bring a new and needed focus on supporting victims of crime.”

More recently, Shellenberger has been under fire for approving a plea deal for a Halethorpe woman charged with 328 counts of animal cruelty.

As part of the deal, Kimberly Klein was given probation and a role in rehoming the animals in question, over the objections of animal rights advocates who worried she would simply reclaim them with the help of family members. Police and animal control officers have since raided her home twice to remove dozens more animals. Shellenberger’s office responded by adding more felony charges.

He acknowledges his prosecutor had good intentions but did not recognize the extent of Klein’s mental health challenges.

Giving her a role in rehoming the animals as part of her probation, he said, was “obviously not the right thing to do.”

Keeping the county safe

David, the deputy state prosecutor, has raised over $431,000 as of mid-May and has many prominent county officials backing her — some of whom supported Shellenberger in past campaigns. Shellenberger has raised around $137,500, about a third of David’s total. Lipscomb has raised over $16,600, campaign finance records show.

Shellenberger said money doesn’t tell the whole story.

“I’ve been elected five times, so I don’t have to introduce myself to the electorate. They know who I am. I think I will have enough funding to get my message out,” he said. “For me, it’s about the voters. I’m constantly out there meeting the voters.”

One elected official who has stuck with Shellenberger is Councilman Julian Jones, who is running for county executive in a competitive Democratic primary. They have endorsed one another.

“I don’t agree with everything he’s ever done, but I will give him high marks for aggressively prosecuting violent criminal offenders and keeping Baltimore County safe,” Jones said. “There’s no one who is running who has as much experience as Scott.”

Mohler said experience is not always the defining factor in a race and that David’s campaign represents “generational change.”

“This isn’t a criticism of Scott,” he said. “This is an opportunity.”

Shellenberger has also defended the turnover in his office. He has hired close to 50 prosecutors in the past five years, as veterans have departed for higher-paying federal prosecutor positions or lucrative private law firms. He says he can’t blame them for leaving after a few years for higher salaries; he did the same thing when Angelos asked him to join his successful asbestos litigation practice.

Shellenberger’s top lieutenants, John Cox and Lisa Dever, have been in their roles as long as he’s held his, he said.

After 19 years in the job, the veteran prosecutor has given little thought to what he might do if he doesn’t win.

If he is reelected, he said, he won’t rule out another campaign in four years.