North Laurel is a census-designated place (CDP) in Howard County, Maryland, United States. The published population was 4,474 at the 2010 census. This population was substantially less than the CDP's population in 2000, and was the result of an error in defining the boundary prior to tabulation and publication of 2010 Census results. The corrected 2010 Census population is 20,259. North Laurel is adjacent to the City of Laurel, which is located across the Patuxent River in Prince George's County.
Susan Leigh Smith is an American woman who was convicted of murdering her two sons, three-year-old Michael and one-year-old Alexander, in 1994 by strapping her children in their car seats, and rolling her car containing her two children into John D. Long Lake in South Carolina.
Carjacking is a robbery in which a motor vehicle is taken over. In contrast to car theft, carjacking is usually in the presence and knowledge of the victim. A common crime in many places in the world, carjacking has been the subject of legislative responses, criminology studies, prevention efforts as well as being heavily dramatized in major film releases. Commercial vehicles such as trucks and armored cars containing valuable cargo are common targets of carjacking attempts. Carjacking usually involves physical violence to the victim, or using the victim as a hostage. In rare cases, carjacking may also involve sexual assault.
Capital punishment is a legal punishment under the criminal justice system of the United States federal government. It is the most serious punishment that could be imposed under federal law. The serious crimes that warrant this punishment include treason, espionage, murder, large-scale drug trafficking, or attempted murder of a witness, juror, or court officer in certain cases.
Capital punishment was abolished via the legislative process on May 2, 2013, in the U.S. state of Maryland.
Vernon Lee Evans is a contract killer convicted for murdering two witnesses scheduled to testify against the leader of a drug gang. In 1984, he was convicted and sentenced to death together with drug kingpin Anthony Grandison for the 1983 murders of Susan Kennedy and David Scott Piechowicz. David Piechowicz and his wife Cheryl had been scheduled to testify against Grandison at trial on federal drug charges.
Carolyn Warmus is an American former elementary schoolteacher who was convicted at age 28 of the 1989 murder of her lover's wife, 40-year-old Betty Jeanne Solomon. After a hung jury at her first trial in 1991, Warmus was convicted of second degree murder and illegal possession of a firearm at her second trial in 1992. She served 27 years for the murder and was released from prison on parole on June 17, 2019.
João Hélio Fernandes Vieites was a six-year-old Brazilian boy who was murdered on February 7, 2007 by being dragged from a car for 7 km after an armed carjacking by a group of young males in Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro. The callous and brutal manner in which João Hélio was murdered shocked the Brazilian public and received substantial coverage in Rio's media and throughout Brazil. The murder sparked a number of public protests demanding concrete solutions to the extreme violence plaguing the city, amendments to the constitution and penal code to increase the punishment for brutal crimes, and greater accountability placed upon adolescents who commit murder.
Jones v. United States, 526 U.S. 227 (1999), is a United States Supreme Court case interpreting the federal carjacking statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2119, to set forth three distinct crimes, each with distinct elements. The Court drew this conclusion from the structure of the statute, under which two subsections provided for additional punishment if the defendant inflicts more serious harm. The Court also distinguished Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224 (1998), because that case allowed for sentencing enhancement based on a prior conviction.
Channon Gail Christian, aged 21, and Hugh Christopher Newsom Jr., aged 23, were from Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. They were kidnapped on the evening of January 6, 2007, when Christian's vehicle was carjacked. The couple were taken to a rental house. Both of them were raped, tortured, and murdered. Four males and one female were arrested, charged, and convicted in the case. In 2007, a grand jury indicted Letalvis Darnell Cobbins, Lemaricus Devall Davidson, George Geovonni Thomas, and Vanessa Lynn Coleman on counts of kidnapping, robbery, rape, and murder. Also in 2007, Eric DeWayne Boyd was indicted by a federal grand jury of being an accessory to a carjacking, resulting in serious bodily injury to another person and misprision of a felony. In 2018, Boyd was indicted on state-level charges of kidnapping, robbery, rape, and murder.
Anthony Grandison is an American drug dealer and murderer who was formerly on death row in Maryland. He was sentenced to death for ordering the killing of a pair of witnesses in 1983. On December 31, 2014, his sentence was commuted to life without parole by outgoing governor Martin O'Malley who reprieved all four members of Maryland's death row.
Holloway v. United States, 526 U.S. 1 (1999), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the court addressed the issue of whether the federal carjacking law applies to crimes committed with the "conditional intent" of harming drivers who refuse a carjacker's demands.
The Freeway Phantom is the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer who murdered five girls and a woman in Washington, D.C., between April 1971 and September 1972.
Wincopia Farms is a historic farm located at North Laurel, Howard County, Maryland, United States.
Allan Patterson Newman was an American criminal and serial killer. In a crime spree lasting nearly two years across three states, Newman committed four murders and a dozen bank robberies prior to his capture at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for his crimes and imprisoned at Jessup Correctional Institution, where he was found dead in his cell in 2000.
Alexander Wayne Watson Jr. is an American serial killer. Initially convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1994 murder of a woman in Forestville, Maryland, Watson's DNA was later matched to three additional killings in Anne Arundel County committed years before. For these crimes, he pleaded guilty and received four additional life imprisonment terms.
Dustin John Higgs was an American man who was executed by the United States federal government, having been convicted and sentenced to death for the January 1996 murders of three women in Maryland. Tamika Black, Tanji Jackson, and Mishann Chinn were all shot and killed near the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, on the Patuxent Research Refuge in Prince George's County, Maryland. Because this is classed as federal land, he was tried by the federal government in addition to the state of Maryland. His case, conviction, and execution were the subject of multiple controversies.
The murder of Mohammad Anwar occurred on March 23, 2021, as a result of a daylight carjacking by two teenage girls next to Nationals Park in Washington, D.C.
On October 7, 2001, American nurse Joann Lee Tiesler, 30, was raped and stabbed to death in her home in Cherry Log, Georgia, by William LeCroy Jr., her neighbor and a former U.S. soldier. LeCroy, who was also a sex offender, had broken into Tiesler's house while she was out shopping, waited for her to come home, then bound, sexually assaulted, and stabbed her to death. He was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on October 11, 2001, while attempting to flee to Canada in Tiesler's car. He was sentenced to death in federal court in 2004 and executed by the federal government on September 22, 2020.
Lezmond Charles Mitchell was a Native-American criminal who was executed by the United States federal government for the 2001 murders of a woman and her granddaughter in Arizona. The murders were committed during the course of a carjacking, and since this is qualified as a federal offense, Mitchell was tried and convicted in federal court. His case sparked controversy as the Navajo Nation tribe he was a part of openly opposed the government's plans for his execution, along with Mitchell himself maintaining he was involved in the murders but was not the mastermind behind them. Mitchell was the only Native-American on federal death row up until his execution via lethal injection on August 26, 2020.
