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By Kenneth C. Rossignol
ST. MARY’S TODAY

LEONARDTOWN (Jan. 13, 2009) --- Leonardtown --- A boring little hamlet by the bay, Breton, that is, where they still roll up the sidewalks at night and politics is conducted with all the vigor and angst of a tightly contested softball game.

Throw in a bag of $20,000 in cash, a millionaire with a drug dealing conviction on his record who has admitted firing an automatic weapon at duck hunters near his home; a sheriff deputy’s gun illegally on loan to that felon; a lawyer with his smarmy real estate partner and an election for chief prosecutor later this year and all of the elements of lots of good news stories are in the fire.

While some readers might figure this newspaper is making all this stuff up just to sell newspapers, don’t think we wouldn’t try, but this is St. Mary’s County and ‘all you have to do is stay awake and these people just write the paper for you’ were the words 20 years ago of longtime Maryland newspaper editor T. J. duCellier, in referring to ST. MARY’S TODAY.

It appears that more than ever, T.J.’s summary is coming true once again.
Even Steven King couldn’t come up with this Legal Fantasy that has been playing out in the Walled City of Leonardtown for the past year or so.

The latest chapter got fired up last Friday when the cops went out and picked up self-described ‘Land Shark’ Daniel Brown again, on another slew of land deal charges, and this time also arrested his real estate business partner, John A. Mattingly Jr.

The cops, led by Vice Narcotics Commander Capt. Daniel Alioto of the St. Mary’s Sheriff’s Department, picked up Brown and Mattingly on new Circuit Court Grand Jury indictments late in the day on Friday, guaranteeing that the pair would have to spend the weekend in jail prior to seeing a Circuit Court Judge to obtain bail.

The motion filed this week in Circuit Court for bail review by Columbia attorney Clarke F. Ahlers, attorney for John Mattingly Jr., included testy communications between him and Assistant State’s Attorney Daniel White; a description of a witness watching Leonardtown attorney Daniel Slade partying with $20,000 in cash brought to him by the convicted drug dealer-turned-millionaire businessman along with mundane and boring recitations of prevailing law regarding why the Judge should allow Mattingly out of the clink, pending trial.

Mattingly, a bright and talented attorney, had turned to finding land which was undervalued, thought to be worthless due to deed restrictions, lack of perc for sewage systems, right-of-way or access problems, buying them cheaply, fixing the problems if possible and then reselling them, hopefully at a large profit.

The troubles that Mattingly and Brown find themselves in now are two-fold. First, the allegations are being made by police and prosecutors that Mattingly and Brown may have improperly affixed notary seals to deeds and contracts, may have fraudulently conducted land deals and that they interfered with the criminal investigation of Terry Clarke, owner of the Tiki Bar at Solomon’s Island, and attempted to bribe witnesses in a criminal case against Clarke.

Second, Mattingly was bold enough to declare last February that he was going to take on St. Mary’s States Attorney Richard Fritz after hesitating to do so in 2006. Many in the area were hopeful that Mattingly would run.

Fritz and then-Sheriff Richard Voorhaar, along with a gang of deputies cleared out newsstands of all available copies of ST. MARY'S TODAY on Election Day in 1998, in an effort to prevent voters from reading negative articles about them prior to voting.  A United States Court of Appeals ruling compared them to the KKK and Nazi Germany in ruling that they violated the Constitutional Rights of the newspaper.

Fritz had lost a stunning defeat in a bid to oust Circuit Court Judge Karen Abrams in the 2004 election and appeared vulnerable as female voters had become disgusted with the attitude of Fritz towards women which was revealed in a 2000 ABC 20/20 interview with anchor Chris Wallace, now the host of Fox News Sunday. The idea that this twit Fritz would defeat the county’s first female judge riled up the women and Fritz was trounced in the election.

Fritz had actually told the Enterprise that he would easily beat Abrams and quickly be sworn in as Circuit Court Judge. But voters had another idea.

When Mattingly first indicated he was going to throw his hat in the ring in 2006 and then backed out, supporters who were ready to get behind him were disappointed.

In St. Mary’s County, all the criminal defense lawyers are in Fritz’s back pocket and he is in their wallets.

The civil and land attorneys who are doing well won’t run for States Attorney and take a cut in pay.

The criminal defense lawyers who wheel and deal with Fritz, take big fees from their clients and then get plea agreements, don’t have to go to trial and a trail of stets, PBJ’s and nolle prosses are left on the blazing records of the courts while prosecutors and attorneys crowd the fairways at the golf course and soak up the brews at the bar.

The courtroom empties out quick in the morning due to the deals and justice is served, sometimes with chips and dip in the cocktail lounge.

Don’t expect the defense lawyers to take a pay cut and actually have to work.

The criminals who are smart find a way to hire an attorney as the free ones are generally wet behind the ears and new, right out of law school, or just morons and worthless as a lawyer and couldn’t make it in private practice.

An examination of the campaign finance records of Fritz shows numerous donations from A. Shane Mattingly and Daniel Slade and those two lawyers are exactly who John Mattingly advised Terry Clarke to go to with a bag of cash.

John A. Mattingly Jr. had represented Clarke in various civil and corporate dealings.
With Shane Mattingly and Dan Slade as big contributors to Fritz, their clients get sweet deals and everyone goes home happy.

Clarke started off in business like so many do in St. Mary’s County. They sell drugs or finance the drug dealers, making oodles of cash which is never reported on their taxes and live the high life.
In Clarke’s case, he took a turn for the best and got out of drug dealing and went into diving, forming a commercial diving and construction firm and over the past twenty years has done well for himself.

But he had a little problem with his temper on Dec. 29, 2007 and Clarke let loose with gunfire when duck hunters were firing out on a pond near his home.

The hunters called the cops, the cops showed up, got a search warrant and found that one of the cops had loaned his gun to a convicted felon --- Clarke.

That cop, Deputy Randall Wood, is likely to lose his job, he should. It’s too bad as he is a good guy and just got back from active deployment to Iraq in the reserves. But he won’t be the first or only casualty of this saga.

Emily Balanger lost her job as a legal secretary; Mattingly’s mother-in-law lost her job at the Farm Credit office. According to Brown, she processed a loan for his mother and was terminated.
If there is a change in the States Attorney’s post in the election and Fritz should somehow lose, lots of lawyers might find themselves on the street.

The bleeding is likely just getting underway.

Daniel Brown says it is impossible to do business with the way the cops and Fritz have been after him and Mattingly and Ahlers says his client is broke.
Brown says tenants are not paying their rent, he is having trouble making his payments and he can’t do business anymore. As he spent a month in jail being courted by Assistant State’s Attorney White to flip against Mattingly, it’s no wonder that he might be having trouble finding new deals on land.

Prosecutors and police say that Mattingly’s run for States Attorney is simply a smokescreen and was a gimmick to provide a defense as he learned a criminal probe was underway last winter.
In September of 2009, Mattingly filed for the election, making it official.

But the elections aren’t until this September with the primary and November is the general , and all of the Good Old Boys know that Fritz is invincible, unless of course, a female candidate should jump in the race, then he is likely to get his rear end kicked.

Mattingly may not still be on the ballot as he has a lot of work defending himself against the charges brought in the indictments issued last week.

If John A. Mattingly Jr. is indeed guilty of the charges brought against him, so be it. The process of establishing guilt and innocence is just now getting underway.

The prosecution has had it their way for quite a while, with a dramatic search warrant and raid of Daniel Brown’s residence in September, and then arresting him in November. Locking up Mattingly along with Brown last week was a good one for Fritz.

Many voters may now relegate John Mattingly to the same low esteem at which they hold Richard Fritz. 

Fritz, after all, pleaded guilty to the rape of a 15-year-old girl when he was 18, along with two other young men.  The girl involved said she was held down by the three of them and raped as they took turns.

Now it’s the turn of the defense to bring forward their case and to file motions.

A few tidbits from the motion filed by Ahlers on Monday, Jan. 10, 2010:

a. Emily Balanger was a legal secretary and in that capacity saw the bag of cash, the 20 G’s, brought into Dan Slade’s office, just down the street from the Circuit Courthouse and in view of the State’s Attorney’s Office. She saw the money being tossed in the air by a jubilant Slade who then took photos of it with his cell phone, according to the court records. Slade is said to be a friend of Assistant State’s Attorney Daniel White and has never been called before the Grand Jury. No one knows where this money is at the present time, but according to court records it was allegedly used to bribe witnesses in the Clarke case. Daniel Brown says that he used his own money to cause the fellows who were shot at by Clarke to settle a possible civil case. Where’s the Loot?

b. Mattingly stands accused of trying to intimidate a witness. Ahlers says that this is just “absurd”. Don’t argue with this guy, after all this is Leonardtown where the Mad Hatter runs things. Ahlers says that when Mattingly discussed the case with Balanger, the States Attorney’s Office had already dropped the charges against Clarke, the charges that it could have easily have convicted Clarke on and sent him to prison for about 50 years. Clarke, who is not being held in jail as he is cooperating with the prosecutors, as a condition of his plea agreement, according to his attorney Shane Mattingly, is free on bail. Ahlers says that since all charges of a violent nature were dismissed against Clarke, allegations that Mattingly had committed a crime are baseless. Further, Ahlers points out that White himself had asked that Mattingly supply any information about the money photographed by Slade and that is why Mattingly asked the secretary about the cash. Ahlers contends that Mattingly never attempted to keep her from testifying and admonished her to ‘tell the truth’.

c. Apparently Mattingly’s criticism of the practice of letting hoodlums stay out of the hoosegow by making donations to the charity of choice of Assistant State’s Attorney Daniel White “struck a nerve”, according to Ahlers, and an unprecedented and vindictive flood of actions were turned loose upon Mattingly.

d. The fact that Mattingly has filed a federal lawsuit against Fritz and White is factored into the decision to keep Mattingly on the ropes, in jail and unable to fund the lawsuit against them, says Ahlers.

e. In short, the over the top charges against his client represents “an obsession” with Mattingly by White, says Ahlers in the court documents.

What lies ahead in this case should eat up an entire forest by the time this newspaper and the courts get through churning through paper in motions and newsprint. Thank God for the electronic versions or it would be worse.

Included in the court motions for bail was a resume for John A. Mattingly Jr.

Cited in the resume were various class action suits in which he has been involved.

Two of those cases were examined as part of the preparation of this article and in those cases, Mattingly vs. Hughes, and Brown vs. Baltimore-Washington Cellular Inc. et al., the cases were class action suits alleging illegal charging of late fees by the firms. In the first case, Mattingly’s late father was the plaintiff and in the second, Mattingly’s partner’s estranged wife was the plaintiff.

In yet another case of illegal late fees, this class action against Directv, in which Mattingly was the attorney, the plaintiff was the firm owned by Terry Clarke.
ST. MARY’S TODAY has learned that Clarke got free TV service for six months as a result of the settlement while Mattingly allegedly got $800,000 in fees.

NEXT: More court filings by the prosecution, responses from the defendants and any tips on where the CASH went sent in by our readers, all coming up on newsstands this weekend…

Remember, in Leonardtown, all the lawyers are likely guilty of something and don’t take any cash there that you are really fond of or want to keep.
 
 

 
   
   

    

 


 

  


 







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