At around 2:45 a.m. on November 20, 1993, 24-year-old Lawrence Jones, a recent graduate of the University of Maine who was hoping to continue his studies at The Johns Hopkins University, was shot on the 1400 block of Bank Street in East Baltimore, Maryland. Despite grave injuries, Jones was still alive when first responders arrived. Officers from the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) arrived on scene at approximately 3:17 AM, after responding to a call for an injured person. Jones died later that night after being transported to the hospital.
Upon arrival, police began to knock on doors to gather information. Witness G, who lived at Perkins Homes, a public housing development across the street from where Jones was killed, reported seeing two men at a payphone at Eden and Bank Streets. Soon after, she heard a gunshot, and upon returning to the window, saw that the two men at the payphone were gone.
William Rice, a nearby resident, provided statements to the police on several occasions. Rice said that while he and Witness JP were working on a car in the Perkins Homes parking area, he heard a gunshot, saw two men running, and that one was holding a handgun.
Despite efforts by the BPD and Jones’s mother, Yong Cha Jones, who put pressure on police through local politicians, the case went cold.
The case was reopened in 1996 after a jailhouse informant, Alfred Brown, reported that James Langhorne, who was serving 6 years in prison for probation violations, told him that he killed Jones. On July 6, 1996, the case was reassigned to Baltimore Detective J.T. Brown. Detectives then conducted interviews with Alfred Brown and Langhorne’s ex-girlfriend, Nicole Woodard.
According to Detective Brown, on the night of the shooting, Jones had gone to a neighborhood bar to meet two people, FM and RC. At approximately 1:00 AM, Jones left that bar and walked to a nearby club named Bohager’s. At closing time, Jones left and walked back to his home at 1411 Bank Street when he was approached by Langhorne, who shot him. Brown believed that robbery was the motive and that Jones had his ring and wallet stolen.
Langhorne, 23, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder on November 15, 1996.
The trial began on January 27, 1998, in the Baltimore Circuit Court. The prosecution, led by Assistant State’s Attorneys Ilene Nathan and Cassandra Costly, proceeded under the theory that Jones was shot and killed in a robbery while he was walking home from Bohager’s. The prosecution argued that Langhorne and another person, nicknamed “Wink,” confronted Jones at approximately 2:45 AM in front of 1405 Bank St. The prosecution argued that Langhorne and “Wink” had taken Jones’s wallet and family heirloom ring and then shot him in the face. While the weapon was never recovered, firearms analysts reported that the gun was either a .38 or a .357 caliber handgun and that the bullet had entered through Jones’s left eye with a downward trajectory. The analysts reported that the angle of injuries suggested that Jones may have already been falling or kneeling at the time the shot was fired.
Rice testified that he saw two men running from the area shortly after hearing a gunshot. He identified Langhorne as one of the men he observed fleeing the scene, which was across from the Perkins Homes complex.
Witness G testified that during the early morning hours of November 20, 1993, she saw two men standing at a payphone at the corner of Eden and Bank Street and later observed them running up behind the victim, just before hearing a gunshot. She could not identify the men, but her testimony helped the prosecution establish a timeline of events that supported their theory.
Nicole Woodard, Langhorne’s on again/off again romantic partner at the time, testified that on the night of November 20, 1993, Langhorne came over, agitated and pacing. According to Woodard, Langhorne was holding a wallet unfamiliar to her, and later, Langhorne showed her a gold ring with a black stripe and small diamonds, which she believed was taken from the victim. She stated that Langhorne said he committed the robbery with an individual named “Wink.”
Alfred Brown testified that Langhorne confessed to killing a man during a robbery that took place in November 1993. He claimed that Langhorne boasted about robbing and killing a white guy (Jones’s mother was Korean) and taking the man's ring, watch, and money.
Langhorne testified that he was using a payphone at the corner of South Eden and Bank Street when he heard the gunshot. He stated that he saw someone he knew as “Skip” run from the scene, and that was when he fled as well. He denied any involvement in the crime or possession of a weapon or stolen property.
Langhorne was convicted on February 3, 1998, of first-degree murder, robbery with a deadly weapon, and use of a handgun in the commission of a felony or crime of violence. On March 30, 1998, he was sentenced to life in prison, plus 20 years.
After the trial and sentencing, Langhorne filed a direct appeal with the Court of Special Appeals. The conviction was affirmed on April 20, 1999, and the Maryland Court of Appeals declined to review the case.
On January 31, 2000, Langhorne filed a petition for post-conviction relief, which was denied on September 27, 2000.
After serving roughly 20 years of his sentence, Langhorne filed a motion to reopen the petition for post-conviction relief on November 17, 2016. This motion was denied on January 23, 2018. The Court of Special Appeals denied his petition for review.
In February of 2019, Langhorne’s attorney, Daniel Wright, contacted the Office of the State’s Attorney for Baltimore City and requested an extrajudicial review by its conviction integrity unit (CIU). Wright submitted an affidavit from Woodard, in which she recanted her trial testimony.
In February 2019, the Conviction Integrity Program (CIP), a team within the CIU that reviews innocence claims, in partnership with the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project attorney Maggie Abernethy, began an investigation that would last 5 years. The investigation included dozens of witness interviews, a comprehensive analysis of the crime scene, and a review of all available records and related materials.
The CIP investigation undermined the prosecution theory at trial that Jones was a target of opportunity for a mugging when he was walking home from a night out drinking. The CIP recounted that Jones had lived at 1411 Bank Street with two roommates, TP and RQ. Shortly prior to the murder, RQ had been asked to move out because her boyfriend, MB had been disturbing Jones and TP. RQ then moved into MB’s apartment around the corner at 430 S. Eden Street.
On the night of the shooting, contrary to the prosecution theory at trial that Jones had been on his way home from Bohager’s when he was shot at 2:45 am, the CIP found that Jones returned home after leaving Bohager’s. According to TP, Jones then called CP, whom he had recently briefly dated and had just run into at Bohager’s. Jones and CP argued, and CP hung up on Jones. Jones then left his apartment and walked over to 430 S. Eden Street. Jones believed that RQ had stolen some of his compact discs, and he demanded they be returned. MB then arrived home with another individual, DS. A physical altercation resulted between Jones and MB. DS then pulled Jones and MB apart, assisted by an unknown person who falsely claimed to be a police officer.
Jones then left and headed home. He was going home from MB and RQ’s residence, not Bohager’s, when he was killed.
Additionally, the CIP determined that Jones did not have his heirloom ring on, nor did he have any money on him to steal at the time he was killed. CP told the CIP that Jones had lost his ring before the day of the murder. CP said that when she ran into Jones at Bohager’s, she asked if he had found his ring, and Jones replied that he had not. CP told the CIP that she was “100% sure” Jones did not have the heirloom ring the night he was murdered, and that she was disturbed that the conviction seemed to hang so heavily on the evidence about the ring. She said that she had contacted Jones’s mother to inform her that Jones was not wearing the ring that night. CP also told the CIP that by the time Jones arrived at Bohager’s, he had spent all his money, and she and her friend had to pay for his drinks. Two other witnesses, RC and FM, had corroborated that Jones had spent all his money on drinks at another bar before going to Bohager’s.
The new evidence about Jones’s ring and cash contradicted the original testimony of key witnesses from the trial. During Woodard’s conversations with the CIP, she recanted her earlier statements and said that Langhorne had never told her he robbed or killed anyone. Woodard said police advised her to say that Langhorne told her he robbed, shot, and killed Jones. She told the CIP that she had been coached by the police on what to say in her interview, and that the police provided her with a script for her statement. She further stated police threatened her with removal of her children if she did not cooperate.
When police first interviewed her in November 1998, Woodard was questioned for about five hours before they began recording the conversation. When the recording began, Detective Brown was heard frequently reminding Woodard of what she had “previously said” when the interview was not being recorded. In the recording, Woodard described the stolen ring as gold with black and a line of diamonds, contradicting other witnesses’ descriptions of Jones’s heirloom ring as an “opal pinky ring.” Additionally, Woodard described a stolen watch, but Jones’s watch was still on him when his possessions were inventoried at the morgue, and Woodard’s description of the watch was inaccurate. When Woodard had originally been questioned, she could not provide a specific day, month, or year of when the shooting occurred, and told investigators that the police never asked her to establish a timeline. The 1998 tape of Woodard's statement was not disclosed to the defense before trial, and a copy was only recovered in 2024.
The CIP interviewed Rice on March 29, 2023. Rice recanted his trial testimony and said he could not identify either of the two men he saw running. He was adamant that he had been too far away to see the incident and he did not know whether the running men had anything to do with the incident. He said that the police had paid him money for drugs in exchange for his cooperation.
The CIP also discovered that Witness JP had been shown a photo array containing an image of Langhorne but failed to identify him. This photo array and failure to identify were never disclosed to the defense.
Contrary to Woodard and Alfred Brown’s original statements, documentation from the BPD Mobile Unit and the Evidence Control Unit showed that no ring or watch was recorded as missing or recovered.
Jones’s cousin, who had been appointed as the “victim’s representative,” told CIP about a conversation on the eve of trial, in which Detective Brown stated that Alfred Brown had been “planted undercover” to obtain a confession. Records showed that Brown had been arrested and charged with escape. Following this arrest, he had told officers he had information that related to the Langhorne case.
The CIP learned in their investigation that Witness G could not have physically seen the pay phones on the corner of Eden and Bank Street that she had testified at trial to seeing. The CIP determined it was physically impossible for her to have seen the phones because a brick building and a large tree obstructed the view from her residence.
Finally, the CIP investigation revealed several alternate suspects who were either inadequately investigated, or whose existence was never disclosed to the defense. Because DS had told police about witnessing the physical altercation, MB had been detained and investigated as a suspect during the initial investigation. Police investigations into MB included interviews with individuals who described him as a “violent drunk” with access to guns. MB also refused to take a lie detector test. The investigation was focused away from MB, and he was not explored further as a suspect during the second investigation in 1996. This information was not disclosed to the defense during the trial.
During Detective Brown's trial testimony, he had stated that “Skip,” the person Langhorne had testified he saw fleeing the scene while he was at a nearby payphone, was not a suspect. The CIP found that Brown’s testimony directly contradicted police records that repeatedly identified “Skip” as a suspect in the case. It is uncertain whether the defense was informed about this alternative suspect information.
Other alternative suspects included the man who falsely claimed to be a police officer and an individual identified as JB. On November 26, 1993, the police had interviewed JB, who confirmed he was in the area at the time of the crime. JB stated he frequently drove around the area but had no explanation for his whereabouts at the time of the shooting. When the police refused to provide JB further information about the shooting, police noted that JB became “very hostile and belligerent.” According to police investigation records, JB lived with his father, who owned a registered Colt .357, which had been identified as one of the potential firearms used in the shooting of Jones.
On January 24, 2025, CIP Chief Lauren Lipscomb and Baltimore City State Attorney Ivan J. Bates moved to vacate Langhorne’s conviction. On February 10, 2025, Baltimore Circuit Judge Michael A. DiPietro granted the motion to vacate. The prosecutors then dismissed the charges, and Langhorne was released.
On February 13, 2025, Bates said, “My office has a duty to pursue justice in all its forms, one of which is addressing past convictions that no longer have integrity. Based on interviews and a review of the evidence, it is clear that Mr. Langhorne was wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for this offense…Truly, I have not a single shred of doubt in my mind that this young man, without a doubt, is innocent and should never have been in prison — ever.” In a letter, one of Jones’s family members described as “unfathomable . . . what Mr. Langhorne endured over the years, and sadly no one can give that time back to him. Our new beginning will be as it was 30 plus years ago, waiting, waiting and waiting for a call in hopes that there was a break in the case. As for James Langhorne, I hope and pray that his new beginning will be a positive one, not only for him but his family and community.”
Langhorne said, “I worked 30 years to get to this point. I’m going to enjoy every moment.”
In July 2025, Langhorne was awarded $2,748,795 in state compensation by the Maryland Board of Public Works.
⎯ Alyssa Nicole Aldaz, Melissa Michelle Andrade, Lauren Elizabeth Kong, Callahan Grey Krahling, and Mary Elizabeth Penny
Posting Date: 07-30-2025
Last Update Date: 11-10-2025
