Ex-Baltimore Police officer sentenced to life in prison for Owings Mills day care sex abuse

Luke Parker | The Baltimore Sun | April 14, 2025 | Original Source

James Weems Jr., a retired Baltimore Police officer who drove a van for his wife’s daycare business, was sentenced to life in prison Monday for sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl under his care.

In October, a jury found Weems guilty of second-degree rape and other charges after a five-day trial in Baltimore County Circuit Court.

Though Weems’ attorneys questioned the justification of a life sentence for their 59-year-old client, Baltimore County Circuit Judge Michael Finifter said Weems’ actions and inability to take responsibility “scream out for punishment.”

“He created a lot of the trust he then broke,” Finifter said.

Weems’ defense attorneys, Thomas Pavlinic and Peter McDowell, declined to comment after court.

Monday’s hearing ends Weems’ criminal case that has stretched nearly three years and included both the conviction and testimony of his then-wife, Shanteari, who shot the former cop and Marine after the first allegations were made.

Now divorced, Shanteari Weems ran Lil Kidz Kastle, the Owings Mills daycare at the center of the case. A few months after the July 2022 shooting, she pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and was handed a four-year prison sentence.

Assistant State’s Attorney Zarena Sita, a member of the county prosecutor’s Child Abuse and Sex Offense Division, on Monday called the shooting an “elephant in the room.” Jurors were not told about the shooting during the trial, but Sita brought it up before sentencing to discredit Weems’ claims of innocence.

“The person closest to him believed so strenuously he did those things that she shot him,” Sita told the court.

Last year, a jury convicted James Weems on six counts after five hours of deliberation, all related to the experience of one girl: two counts of second-degree rape, three counts of sexual abuse of a minor and one count of displaying obscene matter to a minor.

Those jurors did not know that a grand jury had indicted him on more than 20 other charges, some involving other children.

Police began investigating James Weems in 2022 after family members of the girl noticed she was watching pornography on her aunt’s iPad. Concerned, they asked who had shown her the videos, according to charging documents. The girl said, “Mr. James,” and that she had seen them on the daycare’s bus.

A relative took the girl upstairs to ask more questions, police said, and she told him what she would later tell the jury: Weems had her perform oral sex on him in the bus and that he had touched her on the daycare’s playground.

Sita, who worked the case with Deputy State’s Attorney Lisa Fox Dever, described the girl as awkward and shy, someone who didn’t have a lot of friends and was susceptible to an adult’s attention. Weems, she said, used his experience as a police officer to perform an “expert level of grooming.”

“He was her only friend,” Sita said.

Dressed in a black leather jacket with a jeweled outline of Minnie Mouse on the back, the girl addressed the judge Monday. Soft-spoken, with her mother and the prosecutors beside her, she said Weems had made her “uncomfortable, confused and hurt.”

She said she couldn’t stop thinking about what happened and added, “I just want to be a regular kid.”

The prosecutor acknowledged a large group of supporters of Weems who vouched for him before sentencing. One friend, Sita said, claimed it was a family member who had assaulted the girl, while another went so far as to describe the kind of women Weems was into.

Sita said those supporters failed to consider some of the evidence in the case, such as Weems’ internet history. According to the state, Weems would find pornography resembling and the victim to show that “there was nothing wrong” with what they were doing.

“This isn’t something he happened upon,” Sita said. “He planned it.”

The judge similarly described Weems as having “purposefully, methodically, patiently” groomed the girl and said he had “killed her childhood.”

Because of the ages of the victim and defendant, the state sought an enhanced punishment for Weems: one maxing out with two life sentences and 76 more years in prison.

Finifter’s ruling included all of that time but ran most of it concurrently, or simultaneously, with the first life sentence.

It was not clear Monday whether the defense would challenge Weems’ sentence, which far surpassed their request of 15 years of mandatory prison time. He will be around 75 by then, and the risk of his reoffending would be nearly zero, Pavlinic said.

Beyond appealing his conviction, Weems can ask Finifter to modify the punishment sometime over the next 90 days. The judge could only reduce his sentence in that case. Weems also has 30 days to request a three-judge panel review his sentence, an option that could increase or decrease his punishment.

Whether or not he exercises that right, Weems’ time in court, or at least working with attorneys, is not over.

Earlier this year, the families of two daycare attendees filed separate lawsuits against him, his ex-wife and Lil Kidz Kastle, accusing the business of negligence for having Weems supervise children.

One of the cases states Weems’ addiction to pornography should have disqualified him from the position. The other involved a boy who was 7 at the time of the alleged abuse.

In court, Weems admitted that he sometimes watched pornography when children were inside the van — something his attorney said was “one of the stupidest things” he’s heard a client do. But Weems claimed he only watched it for entertainment and that if any of the kids had seen it over his shoulder, he didn’t know about it.

Sita said the case was an “extreme slap in the face” to parents who pay and entrust someone to take care of their children.

“This is the kind of case that makes parents’ worst nightmares,” she said.