U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson probably had a little more compassion than usual on Wednesday for a defendant: Her son.
By Van Smith
Baltimore City Paper
BALTIMORE — U.S. District Court magistrate judge Deborah A. Robinson normally presides over matters in her Washington, D.C., courtroom. But on Dec. 3 she sat in the gallery of a federal courtroom in Baltimore to witness her 21-year-old son, Philip Winkfield, admit to being an armed heroin dealer.
Winkfield was a Morgan State University student last April, living in Dutch Village in Northeast Baltimore, when a raid team served a warrant at his apartment and found him with five loaded guns (including an assault rifle), a bullet-proof vest, a digital scale, a drug ledger, cutting agent, and a bunch of heroin, cocaine, and pot.
Despite the broad array of evidence, on Wednesday Winkfield copped only to dealing heroin and to the fact “that one or more of the firearms was used in furtherance of the crime,” according to the plea agreement. “This is not a cooperation agreement,” said U.S. District Court judge J. Frederick Motz after accepting Winkfield’s plea deal, which had been hammered out by prosecutor George Jarrod Hazel and Winkfield’s attorneys, Gregg Bernstein and Robert Mance.
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