Baltimore City State’s Attorney Gregg Bernstein held a news conference Tuesday to announce recent successes of the major investigations unit in his office. The conference took place on the corner of East Preston and Ensor Streets in Oliver, where 32-year-old Melvin Jordan was discovered shot several times in June 2007. He died at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Bernstein said Philip Herrell, 32, was convicted last week of first degree murder in that case and that prosecutors will seek a life sentence at a hearing in September.
Bernstein called Herrell a poster child for repeat violent offenders. He was charged with attempted first degree murder in two separate incidents in 1996 and 2000, but those charges were dropped. He was tried on murder charges in the 2012 death of 38-year-old Sherard Houston, who was killed in the same vicinity as Jordan. The jury acquitted him in that case.
Bernstein also announced the sentencing last week of Kyle Williams, a member of the Black Guerilla Family gang, to life in prison for killing another gang member behind a school in Southwest Baltimore as well as several other convictions and sentences.
As Bernstein spoke, a heckler challenged him to use rookie police officers to infiltrate gangs in the neighborhood.
“You got murderers walking up and down these streets left and right and y’all ain’t catchin’ a soul,” said the man who added that his nephew was killed recently on the corner opposite where the news conference was being held.
Bernstein told the man he couldn’t have said it any better, himself, that law enforcement must focus on catching the “worst of the worst” violent offenders.