Maricris Shaw is awaiting trial in St. Mary's County, Maryland on criminal charges of identity fraud, writing bad checks, and vehicle taking. According to the Enterprise, the 35-year-old was apprehended by police in Florida and extradited in May, an experience that she says cost her the life of the unborn baby she carried for six months.
The St. Mary's County state's attorney's office outsources its extradition services to Con-Link Transportation Corp., a company it's used for the past dozen years.
Kevin McDevitt, Shaw's lawyer, said his client had a sonogram done in Florida before she got into Con-Link's van.
"Everything was fine with the baby," he said.
Shaw said she told a judge in Florida that she wanted to return to Maryland and resolve her legal problems, but that she was concerned from the onset when the van's crew put her and other inmates in restraints.
"They put a big chain on my belly," she said. "They put me in the back. I was in the middle [with] inmates on my left and right side."
Shaw says she rode in two different vans with six different drivers through 14 different states by the time her transport was complete. However, during the first couple days she became sweaty and dizzy, to the point where other inmates pleaded with the crew to increase the air conditioning in the van because of Shaw's pregnancy.
But in days following everything got worse. Much worse. Shaw came down with a fever and started bleeding. Instead of immediately taking Shaw to a hospital, Con-Link drivers instead took her to a gas station, where they asked a female attendant to assess her condition. You read that correctly. Instead of seeking professional medical attention in the wake of Shaw's hemorrhaging during a known pregnancy, Con-Link officers instead sought medical advice from a gas station attendant.
In a display of intellectual acuity that was clearly absent in Con-Link's drivers, the female gas station attendant told officers they had to get Shaw to a doctor right away. However, Shaw claims that officers said they were given orders to do no such thing and instead took her to the next jail on their route, where she was seen by a nurse who allegedly said Shaw looked "perfect" without even checking the baby.
Shaw contends that she arrived at St. Mary's jail in Maryland on June 5, which would mean she spent eight days on the road. However, police and Con-Link officials dispute this.
A man answering the phone at Con-Link's offices said Shaw's account would be "impossible" and not in keeping with its inmate delivery schedules.
"Our trips do not last that long," he said.
Capt. Rick Burris of the St. Mary's Bureau of Criminal Investigations said Friday that a detective is continuing an inquiry on the matter, but that no indications of any wrongdoing have been found.
Fair enough, perhaps. The duration of Shaw's transport should be easy enough to verify if Con-Link and St. Mary's County police maintained even minimal record of her extradition (hardly a given, of course). What may not be so easy to explain, however, is why she allegedly was not taken to an actual hospital until four full days after her arrival in St. Mary's County.
Now, it's sort of a running joke in southern Maryland that if you're not dead by the time you get to St. Mary's Hospital, you will be by the time you leave. But what isn't so funny is that Maricris Shaw claims that she felt her baby moving the day she arrived at St. Mary's jail, but by the time doctors at St. Mary's Hospital assessed her baby's condition they could not detect a heartbeat. It was at this point that Shaw was informed that her baby had died.
As despicable as the treatment of Shaw and her unborn baby appears to have been, it's just about on par with what she's getting right now from the state's attorney and other officials attempting to paint her as a liar.
St. Mary's State's Attorney Richard Fritz (R) said last week at his office in Leonardtown that the crimes Shaw is charged with are "all cases that are based on deceit and untruthfulness," and that any liability for the woman's eventual miscarriage would also have to consider any previous health issues and other accounts of what happened.
"It sounds rather unbelievable that someone would keep a human being caged for seven days in a little van," Fritz said. "Her word is not necessarily the last word, nor should her word necessarily be believed without question."
Just when you think it's safe to go back in the water, ladies and gents, there's Rick Fritz reminding you that St. Mary's County is infested with sharks in the police department and prosecutors' office who revel in demonizing their suspects before they ever even get their day in court.
Fritz, ever the humanitarian, claims it's "unbelievable" that Shaw would be caged for days in a van, yet this is the same guy who just last year saw to it that 16-year-old John Edison Jr. was confined in a government cage for nearly six months on charges for a crime that any rational person would have known he didn't commit. This is the same man who essentially admitted that county and state police executed Jamie Dean in 2006, yet he refused to hold any of the offending officers accountable for their actions.
Worst of all, Fritz implies that because Maricris Shaw is merely charged with crimes that are based on "deceit and untruthfulness," we're simply to conclude that she's lying about the way she was treated during her extradition. Yet again, Fritz appears to be doing his best to convince us he operates under the assumption that we're all guilty until proven innocent. Shaw was pregnant at the outset of her transport from Florida and suffered the tragedy of a miscarriage while in the custody of police and affiliated contractors, yet we're to believe that her baby's fate was due to "previous health issues?" How convenient.
Even if Maricris Shaw is guilty of every charge levied against her, it is indisputable that her baby was innocent and undeserving of its fate. At minimum, one would think that if the state's attorney -- who once claimed it was the responsibility of his office to "[make] sure that our police are above reproach in their relations with our citizens" -- cannot be bothered to even consider the prospect of government malfeasance in the matter, he could at least display a little sympathy for a grieving woman.
That he can do neither merely proves that he's just about the last person who should be allowed to have any control over the legal proceedings in St. Mary's County.