COURT NEWS: PLEA DEALS ARE BEING MADE BY ST. MARY’S STATE’S ATTORNEY JAYMI STERLING IN CRIMINAL CASES IN ST. MARY’S COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT FOR CRIMES OF HIGH-LEVEL ST. MARY’S COUNTY EMPLOYEES

COURT NEWS: PLEA DEALS ARE BEING MADE BY ST. MARY’S STATE’S ATTORNEY JAYMI STERLING IN CRIMINAL CASES IN ST. MARY’S COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT FOR CRIMES OF HIGH-LEVEL ST. MARY’S COUNTY EMPLOYEES

BY KEN ROSSIGNOL
THE CHESAPEAKE TODAY
NEWS AND COMMENTARY ON THE MORONIC ST. MARY’S COUNTY COMMISSIONERS

LEONARDTOWN, MD – A second high-profile criminal case in St. Mary’s Circuit Court reveals that St. Mary’s State’s Attorney Jaymi Sterling occasionally departs from her “no-plea bargain” policy regarding charges involving an important high-level administrator of the St. Mary’s Public Schools and the now former director of the St. Mary’s EMS system, who instead of leading the EMS program, is in jail.

Thomas Patrick Raley, 40, is incarcerated in the St. Mary’s County Jail after pleading guilty to multiple burglary and drug charges in St. Mary’s Circuit Court before Judge Joseph Stanalonis on January 8, 2025. 

Veteran prosecutor and criminal defense attorney Mark T. Foley of Upper Marlboro represents Raley. Foley worked as a homicide prosecutor for Prince George’s County State’s Attorney before joining the historic law firm of Sasscer, Clagett, and Bucher. Leonardtown attorney Kevin J. McDevitt is assisting in the defense.

The case, despite all the hoopla and drama Sterling exhibited at a recent St. Mary’s Commissioners meeting about needing more staff due to a backlog of trials, is a remarkable deviation from Sterling’s many statements about taking serious criminal cases to trial. Sterling’s no plea deal policy apparently has exceptions when it comes to high-level county employees.

Raley awaits sentencing in St. Mary’s Circuit Court on Sept. 15, 2025, and is set to appear on criminal charges, including drugs, in Calvert County on June 6, 2025.

The criminal sexual assault case of Leonardtown High School Assistant Principal Kelly McClure-Hewitt also ended in a plea deal and the details of that case are hidden from the public in Sterling’s office have been unavailable to the public for over one year when McClure-Hewitt entered a guilty plea to a lesser charge of second-degree assault while Sterling dropped the sexual assault charges. The sentence for the assault charge is unknown as the file is missing, and the online record of the plea deal vanished from online court records. According to the now vanished court record, the judge in the case was Judge Michael Stamm, who died on Oct. 2, 2024, and therefore is unavailable to ask him what the sentence was given to the St. Mary’s County public schools official.

Raley reportedly was the victim of an assault in the St. Mary’s County Jail, where he resides awaiting sentencing.

The St. Mary’s County Commissioners hired Raley in December of 2023 as the director of the county’s EMS services, ignoring his theft of drugs from ambulances when he was the Leonardtown Volunteer Rescue Squad chief a few years earlier.  Raley continued to use drugs despite spending time in rehab centers, and it wasn’t long after he was put in charge of the St. Mary’s County fleet of rescue units that he began stealing drugs from narcotics storage compartments in the emergency vehicles.

The St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Department announced on July 23, 2024, that on Tuesday, July 16, 2024, the agency was alerted to suspected tampering with the security seal on a narcotics box in a local medic unit. Detectives from the Criminal Investigations Division found that fentanyl vials in the medic box had been compromised, leading to further investigations that uncovered additional tampering incidents in multiple county medic units and EMS facilities.

The St. Mary’s County EMS system issued an alert to those who had been patients that as part of the junkie director’s thefts, it was learned from the investigation that he replaced pain killing narcotics in the ambulances with saline solution, thus patients needing the administration of drugs got saline solution instead.  One county official said in an off-the-record remark that for that offense, he would like to beat the daylights out of Raley. The public should expect that when an ambulance crew arrives at the scene of a crash on the highways or for a medical emergency at a home or elsewhere, the arriving EMS personnel will have the proper equipment and supplies to assist them on the way to a hospital.

Raley’s employment by the St. Mary’s Board of Commissioners is the second time the board has made a faulty hiring decision for a key employee, putting the public in peril while wasting taxpayer dollars. Steve Walker was hired as EMS director and had no experience in the role; his only background was as a law officer in a town government in Prince George’s County.

Former St. Mary’s Commissioner John E. O’Connor provided this statement to
THE CHESAPEAKE TODAY:

“As County Commissioner Representing District 3 from 2014-2022, I was informed in 2021 that St Mary’s County was looking to hire Mr. Raley in the Department of Emergency Services. This was after he was presumably denied employment while waiting to start at Charles County Department of Emergency Medical Services, allegedly due to his previous criminal actions at Leonardtown Rescue Squad, which led to a plea deal.

Based on publicly available documentation, Judiciary Case Search, and local news articles, it was no secret that Mr. Raley took a plea deal regarding the theft of Narcotics from the Leonardtown Rescue Squad.

While the commissioners typically do not participate in individual hiring decisions, I voiced my concerns about the hiring process and decisions made with this knowledge. Some of the Commissioners on the current board, such as Mike Hewitt, were aware of the circumstances surrounding this employee’s hiring back in 2021, and before they try to deny it, I have the emails to back it up, so tread carefully. It is apparent they must have amnesia.

I specifically cautioned against hiring someone with a history of narcotics abuse and theft into a role that would grant them direct access to narcotics, NCIC information in Dispatch and Communications Systems, rescue squads, the detention center, citizens’ homes, and secure county facilities. I questioned the lack of a proper background process for paramedics and EMTs.

I unequivocally stated that a repeat of the actions at the Leonardtown Rescue Squad incident was not a matter of if but when, and they were giving liability a seat at the table. However, since the records were allegedly expunged, a plea deal was in place, and no actual “conviction” was on record; the then-director of emergency services decided to move forward without consulting the entire board of commissioners, other senior staff, or the county legal team about the hiring decision, pushing him through the process as fast as possible.

This problem could have been solved before it happened. Still, it would have taken an executive session, which needed to be called by the Commissioner President and three votes by the Commissioners. Unfortunately, that never happened, so the citizens are left with the current situation.

I hope the State’s Attorney considers all of the victims who were affected. I hope they weigh all the factors and that he is charged and prosecuted to the fullest extent of any applicable law, bringing a sense of justice and reassurance to the community.”

LAND USE SUPERVISOR WAS CAUGHT BY DRUG TESTING
Drug testing for county employees revealed the regular drug use by the St. Mary’s County Permits Supervisor, Robyn Guyther, which resulted in his exit from the county’s employee rolls.

Board of Commissioners hired ex-cop with no experience to run EMS

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