BALTIMORE (Map, News) - The acquittal of two teenage girls in the November beating of an Edgewood man proves the state needs tougher anti-gang laws, Harford County's top prosecutor said.

Prosecutors said last week that Layelle “Bobo” Reid, 15, and her sister Tommyrre “Mimi” Reid, 16, were members of a the Lady Dubs gang and joined other gang members in the 50-person brawl Nov. 25 that left 44-year-old Gregory Simmons paralyzed from the waist down.

But evidence did not measure up to the state's standards for proving gang membership, and Judge Thomas Marshall suppressed officers’ testimony. That led Harford County State’s Attorney Joseph Cassilly to renew his call for reforms of the 2006 anti-gang law.   

“In order to prove the existence of a gang, you have to prove there's a history of criminal acts, but the list of those acts in the law excludes some of the kinds of crimes we know gangs commit,” Cassilly said.

He and other prosecutors had tried during the last session of the General Assembly to add misdemeanor crimes such as minor assaults and malicious destruction to the list of “underlying crimes” that can be prosecuted as gang offenses, but those efforts failed.

Underage gang members don't usually commit the first-degree assault or murder that are part of the current gang laws, Cassilly said. Rather, he added, they tend to participate in the kinds of minor attacks or gang graffiti that is intended to intimidate people.

Also troublesome is proving that the crimes are being committed to advance the gang’s interest, he said, possibly requiring some future reform or a different approach by prosecutors.

“Though we had evidence of prior assaults, the judge had problems with whether they were gang-related,” Cassilly said.

Defense attorneys David Henninger and Christopher Luber maintained that the fight was merely a family dispute, not gang-related.

msantoni@baltimoreexaminer.com