By Dan Belson
Baltimore Sun
BALTIMORE — A prisoner who was convicted of killing an off-duty Baltimore Police detective is accused of falsifying evidence to back up a recent attempt to exonerate himself.
Police and prosecutors say Brandon Grimes, who has been behind bars since the 2007 shootout that killed Det. Troy Lamont Chesley Sr., filed a fake ballistics report in court last year in support of his effort to get a judge to declare him innocent. The doctored report claimed that Grimes, 40, was wounded by the same gunfire that killed Chesley.
The charges accuse Grimes of developing the scheme with an Indiana woman over the course of several years. In addition to noting various inconsistencies in the doctored bullet report, charging documents point to numerous recorded jail calls where Grimes is heard discussing Maryland Supreme Court rulings, clipping and Xeroxing documents, and the potential payout from the state if he was exonerated.
“When I get this exoneration money I’ll make sure you don’t work again,” Grimes told the woman during a call from prison, police wrote in charging documents. Court records did not show any charges against the woman.
Grimes is charged with fabricating evidence, obstruction of justice, identity fraud and attempted theft. He remains imprisoned at the North Branch Correctional Facility in Cumberland.
Grimes had claimed an assistant state’s attorney turned over the “newly discovered evidence” she had found “in a box somewhere.” The ballistics report had been flagged by prosecutors as “suspicious,” leading to the review that found it was falsified.
Even so, the Baltimore native continued to argue back and forth with prosecutors in court filings.
“The state has yet again threw another hail Mary at thy [sic] eleventh hour with no supporting evidence,” Grimes wrote last month in a filing in his murder case, responding to prosecutors’ assertion that the ballistics evidence had been faked.
Grimes was sentenced in 2008 to life without parole for the early-morning shootout in West Forest Park that killed Chesley, a 34-year-old officer who was returning home from work. Though Grimes initially escaped the scene, he was identified as a suspect when he arrived at a hospital with a gunshot wound. A bullet from Chesley’s gun was recovered from Grimes’ leg.
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