The final peace order trial for Anne Arundel Orphans Court Judge Mark Knapp was halted Tuesday morning and the case against him was dismissed after a district court judge determined the proceedings had exceeded legal deadlines.
Last month, Mr Knapp and Chief Orphans Court Judge Vicki Gipson, who applied for the order against his colleagues, agreed to postpone the trial, citing court time constraints and Mr Knapp’s upcoming overseas holiday.
But on the agreed-upon trial date, Anne Arundel District Judge Laura Robinson ruled that the decision to extend the peace orders hearing beyond the 30-day limit was erroneous.
Mr Knapp’s lawyer, Peter O’Neill, said Mr Robinson was right to halt the trial.
When asked why the team agreed to extend the lawsuit beyond the 30-day deadline if the law was right, Robinson said, “I don’t think you can do that.”
Gipson had accused Knapp of harassing her and other court employees since he was elected in 2022. She described the Orphans Court, where she was first elected in 2018, as a hostile environment and said Knapp’s complaints had “become very aggressive and concerning about everything he does.”
She described being yelled at and subjected to swearing, and in one incident, both she and Orphanage No. 3 Judge David Duva testified that Knapp stood over Gipson, asked her if she felt threatened, then turned to a guard and said, “If you hit her, you can shoot me.”
Gipson’s impetus to file a peace order request against Knapp in May came when he realized he was concerned about the safety of “everyone in the office.”
“I feel like I’m crying,” Gipson told reporters shortly after his firing.
“This is workplace violence,” her lawyer, Don Quinn, said. “That’s the fact… [this can be dismissed on] Technical issues are unacceptable.”
Quinn said Gipson plans to apply for a temporary restraining order against Knapp, and it’s unclear how that will affect the judge’s ability to cooperate.
Knapp said Tuesday he was pleased with the judge’s decision.
“I am pleased the case has been dismissed but had it gone to trial it would have been dismissed based on the nature of the evidence,” he said, telling the Capital Gazette that it was he, not Gipson, who was being harassed. Asked for an explanation, he explained that police were called to the orphanage last month after he was charged with breaching an interim peace order and trespassing at a home.
In past court hearings and interviews, Judge Knapp has said his feuds with Gipson typically began over her “tyrannical” directives, even though all three justices have equal authority in a case. Judge Knapp said he regularly felt left out of decisions, which only require the signatures of two of the three justices to be approved, and that he had no say at the bench since the court began issuing orders over written opinions.
Tuesday’s ruling ends only one of the cases against Knapp.
In addition to the restraining order against Gipson, Knapp faces criminal charges of violating a peace order and tampering with evidence in May, as well as a stalking charge against him in Gipson’s original complaint.
In June, Anne Arundel County police were called to the orphanage’s office in Annapolis after Gipson and Duva discovered Knapp was recording their conversations in their shared room. According to the indictment, Knapp claimed he was the only one recording despite multiple requests to stop, and that it was their fault if they were being recorded in the process.
According to the charging document, when police spoke with Knapp, he told them he had recordings on his phone from June 3. When officers told him the phone would be confiscated as evidence, the suspect requested to speak to a sergeant, and when the sergeant arrived, only recordings from that day remained, police said.
Attorneys from the Maryland Attorney General’s Office are handling both cases against Knapp. The Maryland stalking case involving “egregious conduct” is scheduled to begin trial on August 20.
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Knapp’s lawyer, O’Neill, has declined to comment on the charges, and a trial date has not yet been set.
Following Tuesday’s dismissal of the case, Gipson said the situation has been “terrible” in Orphans Court since the civil and criminal lawsuits were filed.
Gipson has repeatedly criticized the protections, or lack thereof, for judges in her position. Complaints against judges are handled privately by an independent body, the Maryland Commission on Judicial Incapacity, and security teams work with judges instead of the sheriff’s office since the orphans’ court and registry of wills moved out of the county’s circuit court.
That system is insufficient, the Chief Justice said.
“It feels like no one is really responsible for the safety of the judges in Anne Arundel County’s Orphan’s Court,” Gipson said.
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