Prosecutors backtracked on releasing him from prison. Now, a judge has rejected his post-conviction motion.

The man who saw a proposal for his release from prison vanish under a new Baltimore City state’s attorney’s administration won’t get a new trial under his 2022 motion to reopen his post-conviction proceedings.

Circuit Judge Charles M. Blomquist last month denied the motion by John Warren, who has been incarcerated for more than two decades on a 2000 murder conviction. In a written ruling, Blomquist found that it was not “in the interests of justice” to reopen the matter and rejected Brady claims his team made in legal filings.

“Petitioner’s matter was finely litigated,” Blomquist wrote. “Accordingly, Petitioner was not denied his constitutional right to the effective assistance of counsel or the right to a fair trial and sentencing.”

Warren is serving a life sentence for the 1998 killing of his best friend, Haywood Williams, who was shot six times in the head. Initially considered a witness, Warren became a suspect in part because prosecutors believed his description of the shooting conflicted with evidence and witness accounts. He was 17 years old at the time of Williams’ killing.

Blomquist’s ruling is a disappointment for Warren, who in late 2022 appeared poised for release from prison based on a prosecutor’s recommendation for a reduced sentence. Warren’s post-conviction motion alleged a series of errors made by previous attorneys, including a failure to properly make the case that evidence withheld by the prosecutor, known as a Brady violation, was admissible to the case.

His attorney, Nancy Forster, said last week she plans to appeal Blomquist’s decision, adding that Warren’s case “has been a travesty from the beginning.”

Warren said in a statement provided by a friend that he felt devastation and frustration by the judge’s ruling: “I feel like more than enough was proven at the hearing to show that I am innocent and that a hearing being held was in the interest of justice.”

The state’s attorney’s office, meanwhile, issued a statement saying prosecutors’ focus “continues to be ensuring that justice is served in this matter for the victim and their family.” The emailed comment from spokesman James Bentley added that Warren will have another opportunity in the future to file a motion to modify his sentence.

Prosecutors’ approaches to Warren’s case were starkly different under previous State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby and current State’s Attorney Ivan Bates, who took office in January 2023.

In November 2022, Becky Feldman, then an assistant state’s attorney under Mosby, recommended a reduced sentence for Warren that likely would have resulted in his imminent release, in exchange for his withdrawal of pending post-conviction claims and an agreement to forego future motions.

Before a judge could weigh in on that proposal, which Feldman has said was cleared by Mosby, Bates took over. Prosecutors under his administration sought to retract Feldman’s recommendation, and instead opposed Warren’s motion, effectively seeking to keep him behind bars.

Forster argued last year the original proposal was binding. Blomquist sidestepped ruling on that argument, instead deciding that the original proposal wasn’t “in the interests of justice.” He said he would hear arguments on the underlying post-conviction motion — and denied the motion about a month and a half after the Halloween hearing.

In addition to the allegation that Warren’s previous counsel ineffectively made the case for the alleged Brady violation’s admissibility, Warren’s team had contended the case included a failure by attorneys to bring up a second Brady violation and to challenge a prosecutor’s closing argument at trial. It also argued one attorney had a conflict of interest.

Warren’s initial petition for post-conviction relief, which included an allegation of prosecutorial misconduct for failing to disclose Brady material, was denied in 2013.

The first alleged Brady violation surrounded notes made during a police interview of witness Julia Smith, who has since died. The notes showed that Smith identified two potential suspects to police who may have had a motive — “Edwin” and “Rome,” who said in front of her that they planned to “run up into the Victims house on New years eve and kill him,” according to a copy of police notes included as an exhibit in Feldman’s 2022 filing.

Forster argued that testimony was admissible, despite being hearsay, because evidence suggesting a defendant didn’t commit a crime shouldn’t be trumped by evidentiary rules.

Blomquist, however, said the interview notes were of “dubious value” and didn’t sufficiently indicate the information was trustworthy. Even if it had been admissible, Blomquist wrote, it wouldn’t have led to a “reasonable probability of a different result,” as is required by Brady.

The judge said there was “strong evidence” that Warren committed the crime, pointing to his presence at the scene, a witness who said she heard gunshots and saw Warren flee with a firearm and gunshot residue found on Warren’s hand.

In response to that finding, Forster said in an email: “It is stunning to me that any court would condone the state engaging in a Brady violation that withheld police officer notes taken after interviewing a woman who named two people involved in the murder, neither of whom is Mr. Warren.”

Forster previously questioned in an interview with The Baltimore Sun whether the gunshot residue could have been a result of Warren hugging Williams following the shooting. Her 2022 post-conviction motion stated that, at trial, a gunshot residue analyst testified that particles “can be transferred from a person’s clothing to the hands of someone who has grabbed that clothing.”

Blomquist went on to knock down Warren’s other post-conviction claims, saying the other alleged Brady violation was “speculative,” the attorney accused of having a conflict of interest never had “substantial” involvement in the other case and that trial prosecutor’s rebuttal closing argument was appropriate.

Bentley, the state’s attorney’s spokesman, wrote in its statement that the state’s attorney’s office acknowledges the steps Warren has taken to rehabilitate himself, and are “encouraged by his progress.”

“We understand that this incident occurred when the defendant was young, and we remain committed to ensuring viable pathways for returning residents,” Bentley said. “Although the court ultimately decides whether to grant or deny relief [on any future motion to modify his sentence], if he continues on the same path unimpeded, we believe he will increase his chance of securing the relief he seeks in the future.”

Warren previously sought a modified sentence under the Juvenile Restoration Act. It was granted in part in 2023 by Judge Emanuel Brown, who changed Warren’s original sentence of life plus 20 years for murder and handgun convictions to a sentence of life, with a concurrent 20-year handgun sentence. Under that 2021 law, a person denied or partially granted sentence modification cannot file a second motion for the same sentence for at least three years.

Deputy State’s Attorney Tom Donnelly said last year that prosecutors viewed that as the appropriate time to revisit Warren’s sentence, rather than the motion to reopen post-conviction. Donnelly said the post-conviction avenue is for checking the integrity of a conviction, not “an additional tool for simply modifying someone’s sentence.”

Warren has maintained his innocence for decades and, in 2019, brought his case to the Conviction Integrity Unit of Mosby’s State’s Attorney’s Office. The unit said two years later that available evidence didn’t support a determination of factual innocence.

Last year, in an interview from prison, Warren told The Baltimore Sun that he was devastated by prosecutors’ decision to backtrack from Feldman’s offer.

“They got my family’s hopes high, my friends’ hopes high,” Warren said. “I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve cried, to be honest with you.”