Anne Arundel state’s attorney can’t try murder case herself, MD Supreme Court rules

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Anne Arundel County‘s top prosecutor can’t take the lead in a high-profile murder case, the Maryland Supreme Court ruled last week.

The court unanimously ruled Friday that State’s Attorney Anne Colt Leitess can’t appeal a judge’s decision to disqualify her from the prosecution of James Strachan Houston, a doctor who is accused of stabbing his wife to death.

Leitess was removed from the case last May because of the possibility that she could have to testify as a witness. She had interviewed several people without an investigator or other prosecutors present, including a friend of Houston’s, who said Houston told him his wife had “pulled a knife” on him earlier.

Leitess said she asked a subordinate to reinterview that person to obtain the same information, due to the likelihood that she would have to testify to his statements as a witness. But she did not disclose the statements to the defense.

Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Mark Crooks found that Leitess failed to disclose exculpatory evidence, disqualified her and ordered a “firewall” preventing almost all communication between her and the prosecutors handling the case.

At a hearing, The Baltimore Banner reported, Crooks said the withholding of evidence “points in the direction of intentional misconduct,” and merited review by the Attorney Grievance Commission.

The Maryland attorney general’s office, which represented Leitess on appeal, declined to comment. Lawyers for Houston declined as well.

Houston was charged with first- and second-degree murder in connection with the fatal stabbing of Nancianne Houston in Edgewater in August 2024. First-responders found them both with stab wounds and pronounced her dead at the scene. James claimed self-defense, but The Banner reported that prosecutors believe he stabbed himself in locations where he knew the wounds wouldn’t be fatal.

Leitess’ conduct threw the viability of the case into question and prompted an assistant state’s attorney, Carolynn Grammas, to quit and challenge her in the Democratic primary. The case has been on hold since Leitess appealed the orders disqualifying her and creating a firewall.

While the state’s top court ruled she couldn’t appeal the decision to disqualify her, it did allow her to appeal the decision erecting a firewall. The court noted that it wasn’t ruling on the merits of the orders, only whether those orders could be appealed.

Leitess had appealed under the collateral order doctrine, an exception to a rule that only allows appeals of final orders. Nonfinal orders can be appealed if they meet all four elements of the doctrine.

Chief Justice Matthew Fader wrote that the disqualification order wasn’t appealable because it “does not resolve an issue that is completely separate from the merits” of the case. The court upheld the Maryland Appellate Court’s June 2025 decision to dismiss the appeal.

“We cannot evaluate whether the State’s Attorney is likely to be a necessary witness at trial without evaluating how the trial might progress, how the several witnesses might testify, and how the court might rule on various evidentiary issues,” Appellate Judge Kevin Arthur wrote in last year’s decision. “For that reason, we are constrained to conclude that the State cannot satisfy the third element of the collateral order doctrine.”

The Supreme Court ruled that the firewall order could be appealed because the issue was arguably separate from the merits.

“The circuit court believed that the firewall order was compelled by the fact of the State’s Attorney’s status as a witness in the case,” Fader wrote. “On the record before us, we see no reason why the Appellate Court cannot assess that conclusion without its analysis becoming intertwined with the merits.”