MARYLAND
Baltimore Sun
Dan Rodricks
A friend who gets up even earlier than I do called yesterday morning, before I'd released the hounds or seen the morning paper. "The world has gone mad," he said. "Jeff Toohey gets 18 months for molesting children, and Philip Akbar Shabazz gets three years for overdue library books."
Indeed, The Sun reported yesterday two stories - one stacked above the other across this very page - from the Baltimore County courts.
In the Circuit Court, we had Judge John G. Turnbull suspending all but 18 months of a five-year sentence for Jerome F. "Father Jeff" Toohey, the former Roman Catholic priest and Calvert Hall chaplain, for sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy he was supposed to be counseling through family turmoil back in the 1980s.
The same day, in District Court, we had Judge Norman R. Stone III sentencing Shabazz to three years in prison for stealing hundreds of books - valued at $679, according to court documents examined by The Sun - from the Baltimore County Public Library.