Judge Paves Way for Towson Man’s Release Less Than Two Months After 5-Year Sentence

Less than two months after a Towson man was sentenced to five years in prison for assault and a sex offense, a Baltimore County judge has agreed to modify his sentence, paving the way for his release despite strenuous opposition from prosecutors.

Samuel Logue, 28, originally was charged with first-degree rape and other offenses in connection with an hours-long attack on a woman at his Prospect Circle home on Oct. 27, 2024.

The victim told police she had met Logue through a dating app a few days before the attack. She said he held her at his home for roughly three hours, punched her, gouged her eyes, choked her, forced his fingers down her throat and sexually assaulted her. She also said he put the barrel of what appeared to be a rifle in her mouth and threatened to shoot her. The weapon was later determined to be a BB gun.

“During those hours, I was terrified,” she wrote in a victim impact statement read in court. “I felt trapped, helpless, and completely at the mercy of someone who wanted to hurt me. It was torture.”

Logue spent 21 months in the Baltimore County Detention Center awaiting trial before pleading guilty June 11 to first-degree assault and a misdemeanor fourth-degree sex offense. On July 27, Judge Mickey Norman sentenced him to 25 years in prison, suspending all but five years of active incarceration.

Immediately after the sentencing hearing, Norman privately told attorneys for both sides that he would grant a defense motion to modify the sentence “so that the defendant did not reach the general population of the Division of Corrections,” Assistant State’s Attorney Zarena Sita said Monday.

Ten days after sentencing, Logue’s attorney, Brian Thompson, filed a motion requesting a sentence modification hearing.

“Modifying this sentence does not seem fair,” Sita told Norman. “Modifying the sentence seems like an affront to deterrence for this defendant specifically, as well as to the general public, who are going to see that this defendant is being released from incarceration after less than two years while this case was pending.

Norman modified Logue’s sentence on the first-degree assault conviction to 25 years in the Maryland Division of Correction, suspending the balance of the sentence. On the fourth-degree sex offense, Norman imposed a consecutive one-year sentence but suspended it in its entirety. The modification effectively allows Logue to be released from state prison without serving additional time on either conviction.

Upon his release, Logue will be on supervised probation for four years.

“If you violate probation, I will put you in jail for the absolute balance of sentence that I possibly can,” Norman told Logue, “because at that point, you will have, without a doubt, demonstrated that you are a danger.”

After sentencing, Logue spent a month at a correctional intake facility before being transferred to Eastern Correctional Institution, where he was held for another three weeks.

On Monday, Logue told Norman he feared for his life at Eastern.

“The environment was completely different [from BCDC], and it was completely sobering,” Logue said.

“I am going to ask the court to go ahead and give this young man a chance to get back on the right side of society,” Thompson told Norman.

Thompson said Logue has mental health problems that are exacerbated by drugs and alcohol.

In prior court filings, Thompson wrote that on the night of the attack, Logue believed the victim was on a sex-trafficking list and was going to be abducted. He also believed people were trying to break into his home. The victim said Logue had “crazy eyes” that night and attributed his drastic change in behavior to his consumption of alcohol and medications.

After his release, Thompson said, Logue would enter an intensive rehabilitation facility, where he would be regularly tested for drugs and alcohol. He also would be placed on GPS monitoring.

The only thing now preventing Logue’s release is a Harford County probation violation stemming from a fourth-degree burglary case, which Thompson said he would attempt to resolve. In that case, Logue received probation before judgment after being charged with trying to break into a gun safe at his father’s home.

Sita told Norman that the victim is “grossly disappointed” in how the case has unfolded.

“Nothing has changed with the sentence that Your Honor imposed a few weeks ago,” Sita said. “Nothing has changed to make it so that this defendant deserves a chance … to be out.”

The only thing that has changed, Sita said, is that the victim has lost trust in the judicial system.

“She is disappointed that she was beaten all over her body,” Sita said. “And where we are now is the defendant coming forward and asking Your Honor to release him after less than two years of incarceration, when she’s living in a prison in her mind for the rest of her life.”

Thompson told Norman that Logue, whom he has known since Logue was a teenager, has strong family support and accepts responsibility for his actions.

“He has always understood that he deserved to go to jail, that he deserved to be punished for his behavior that night,” Thompson said.

Thompson said an expert hired by the defense in preparation for trial concluded that Logue was not criminally responsible for his actions because of a mental disorder or defect. The state’s expert disagreed. Had the case gone to trial, Thompson said, it would have been a “battle of the experts.”

The victim attended Logue’s sentencing in July despite the difficult emotions caused by being in the same room with him, Sita said. She chose not to attend Monday’s hearing.

“Knowing everything that has gone on in this case, knowing the defendant and his far-reaching pull with obviously a very talented attorney and with his family members,” Sita said, “the victim has elected not to be here today. She did not want to have to put herself through this again.”

At the July sentencing, Norman told Logue he was imposing prison time because he wanted him to experience fear similar to what his victim felt the night he assaulted her.

On Monday, after Logue described fearing for his life at Eastern Correctional Institution, Norman said, “It sounds like he has.”