Third Board seat to be contested this summer

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Change of venue

requested insurance information to Administration, a reference either to the state police or perhaps the Motor Vehicle Administration.

according to the state’s filing documents, his driving was and is not an issue.

“The state has not alleged that the defendant acted in any criminal or negligent manner regarding the operation of the vehicle prior to the accident,” said George Psoras, Mailloux’s attorney, in his June 15 request for a change in venue.

Of the 17 charges, six apparently are duplicates of one another. According to a page called up by the case look-up feature on the state judicial Website, counts 2 and four are identical, as are counts six and eight, nine and ten, 11 and 12, 14 and 15, and 16 and 17.

There is no obvious explanation for why the state filed six charges that are exact duplicates of one another.

There are actually 11 charges at issue, and even these seem similar to one another.

For instance, one says that Mailloux failed to immediately stop his vehicle at a scene of an accident involving bodily injury. Another one alleged he had failed to stop his vehicle at a scene of an accident involving death.

Other charges involve alleged paperwork infractions. One said he had failed to give insurance policy information, and another alleged he had failed within 15 days after the accident to furnish volume of hatred and columny directed at Mailloux by some of those who have posted comments for the past year on the Justice for Gavin Facebook page.

It seems likely that the defense will ask for some consolidation of these remaining charges.

Membership on that site is in excess of 22,000.

There have been reports, unconfirmed, that a police report of the accident indicates pedestrian error was a factor in the accident. So far no police report has been entered into the case file, and the term “pedestrian error” does not appear in any public documents.

The discovery phase that takes place in criminal cases before trial is about to begin.

If eventually entered into evidence, this police report might suggest that had Mailloux stopped at the scene where he could have provided immediate assistance and testimony to responding police officers, this case might not be heading for a preliminary hearing on Aug. 18 in Snow Hill on a number of motions by the defense.

The motion for a change in venue filed with the clerk of Worcester County Circuit Court is a tenpage document, with another 200 pages consisting of supporting exhibits.

Some of these pages show multiple examples of vitriol directed at Mailloux, with no regard for the presumption of innocence that is a bedrock principle of the U.S. judicial system.

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Psoras Jr., the Lutherville, Md., defense attorney, contends these exhibits show a tremendous

Psoras is essentially contending that his client can’t receive a fair trial in Worcester County because of the massive pretrial publicity, much of it prejudicial against Mailloux.

It remains to be seen whether the office of the Worcester County State’s Attorney Kris Heiser will contest the change of venue request. According to the state judicial Website, assistant States’ Attorney Paul T. Haskell is handling the case.

Originally, Worcester County Circuit Court Judge Brian D. Shockley was scheduled to preside over the motion hearing scheduled for Aug. 16, but that hearing was pushed back two days to Aug. 18 with a new judge assigned.

That judge is Brett Wilson of Dorchester County, who retired as that county’s chief administrative circuit court judge in November of 2021.

He’s also a former first judicial district administrative judge covering Dorchester, Wicomico, Worcester and Somerset counties.

Born in Easton in 1958, he’s a former state’s attorney for Wicomico County and a former standing master, now called a magistrate, handling Dorchester County family court cases.

Change of venue

From Page 3

Some documents that are part of the court case record on file in Snow Hill provide more detail about the accident than has been reported in the local media.

One document in particular, the state’s bill of particulars, sets out what would seem to be at the heart of the state’s case against Mailloux, who was driving a black 2011 Mercedes-Benz C300 eastbound on Grays Corner Road, east of its intersection with Maryland Route 589 and west of Samuel Bowen Drive, an entrance into the Glen Riddle community.

Knupp was walking in the eastbound lane of Grays Corner Road when the accident occurred. Reports about the accident has said he was brought to the site in his sister’s vehicle, and that it was parked on the side of the road heading west.

“Defendant was traveling at or near the speed limit of Grays Corner Road [50 miles per hour at the time, since lowered], when he struck Gavin Ross Knupp, causing damage to the front bumper of the defendant’s car, its front body panels and hood, as well as cracking the windshield in several places, damaging its driver’s side mirror, and denting the driver’s side a-pillar,” according to the document.

Knupp “was thrown approximately 90 feet from the point of impact and came to rest on the westbound shoulder” of Gray’s Corner Road, the document continued.

According to the bill of particulars, the state contends that the defendant “knew or should have known” that Knupp “would have sustained serious bodily injury as he had been struck by a motor vehicle at a high rate of speed and had been thrown a considerable distance from the point of impact with the vehicle.

“This point of impact was immediately in front of and apparent to the defendant,” the document reads.

Knupp “did in fact sustain serious bodily injuries, including injuries to his head, his torso, and his extremities, that resulted in his death a short time after the accident.”

Psoras’ response to the state’s bill of particulars, as well as a document demanding that the state produce it, point to a possible defense strategy that could emerge should the case go to trial, either in Worcester County or some other venue. It currently is scheduled for four days in Circuit Court Number 3 in Snow Hill, from Sept. 11 to Sept. 14.

Mailloux’ attorney could be expected to make a case that his client was unaware that he had struck Knupp and didn’t stop at the scene for that reason.

Psoras’ demand document probes the state’s theory of the case and asks for evidence that the defendant knew that the accident resulted in serious bodily injury or death.

Psoras’ response to the state’s bill of particulars essentially is that Haskell, the assistant state’s attorney, was not responsive to the defendant’s demand document. Instead it was a “stock response to nearly every demand, providing little or no factual details as requested” by the defendant.

Haskell indicated that more information might emerge during the formal discovery process.

Haskell’s standard response to many questions was that the “demand is not well-grounded and exceeds the scope of a demand for a bill of particulars,” and also said that the State was “declining to offer further information ... including theories of its case of prosecution,” at least until the discovery phase that has not yet begun.

Some of the questions that Haskell declined to answer went to the issue of what Mailloux was aware of at the time of the accident.

As an example, Psoras asks Haskell in one instance to “particularize the conduct and acts of the defendant which demonstrates the defendant had any actual or constructive knowledge that he was in an accident with a person involving bodily injury or death.”

Change of venue

From Page 5

Similar questions were posed throughout the demand document in the context of each of the counts in the charging document.

Psoras cited a Maryland Court of Appeals decision that suggested that “directing a defendant to look to discovery cannot suffice as a substitute for a legally sufficient bill of particulars.”

He also said that his client had been charged in what’s called a statutory short form “that has an even greater entitlement to a bill of particulars, as its function is to give the defendant notice of the essential facts supporting the crimes alleged at to avoid prejudicial surprise at trial.”

The state had not responded to the defendant’s memorandum on the state’s bill of particulars prior to press time for this edition of the Progress, and it’s not clear whether the state will revise its filing absent a court order to do so.

The skirmishing over the bill of particulars will likely continue at least until the Aug. 18 motion hearing in Snow Hill.