Kevin J. McDevitt, the defense attorney who heroically represented John Edison, Jr. and secured an acquittal for the boy during an egregious non-rape case in 2008, is considering a run for St. Mary's County State's Attorney.
Interestingly, should McDevitt decide to enter the primary this year, he would challenge Richard Fritz, the man responsible for charging Edison, then 16, with rape even though any sober viewer would have known the kid was innocent.
An ASA in Baltimore in his early law years, McDevitt hasn't decide whether or not he'll enter this year's race, and will only acknowledge that he's picked up paperwork to be a political candidate.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have known Kevin McDevitt for more than ten years and consider him a good friend. Personally, I would prefer he choose to continue defending innocents against the tyranny of the state rather than join its ranks.
However, as all radical libertarians know, the fight for liberty is an arduous and systematic task. If we must have public offices, better to have reliable defenders of civil liberties occupying them than power-hungry thugs. I'm not familiar with all of McDevitt's stances on the issues, but his vehement insistence on John Edison's innocence and relentless pursuit of justice in that case made one thing clear in my mind: He could only help to clean up the filth that has inundated the Office of the State's Attorney of St. Mary's County, Maryland.
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