BALTIMORE—Baltimore’s new top prosecutor Ivan Bates announced Friday that he’ll personally prosecute a defendant who was jailed on murder charges last year when he strangled his deaf cellmate to death, according to police.
The case has already raised serious questions about Baltimore’s jail operations and its backlogged court system.
Javarick Gantt, a deaf man who relied on sign language to communicate, was found dead inside his cell in the Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center the morning of Oct. 9.
Weeks later, authorities announced charges against his cellmate, Gordon Staron, 34, who had been locked up since September after his arrest in the deadly stabbing of Keith Bell, 63, near a Baltimore bus stop. Jail officials have refused to answer questions about why Staron was housed in a cell with Gantt, a disabled man facing relatively minor charges….