Personality conflicts between his law clerk and other courthouse personnel weren’t enough to get the outgoing president judge of Cumberland County to relinquish a high-profile murder case.
But now, after several months, a handful of discussions in court, two appeals and an admonishment from the Superior Court of PennsylvaniaJudge Ed Guido is stepping away from the high-profile murder case against Michael Baltimore.
Baltimore, who appeared on a reality show called 90-Day Fiance, went on the run for two years after he was accused of fatally shooting his former boss, Kendall Cook, 39, at GQ Barbershop in Carlisle in 2021.
Guido wrote in a May 23 order that it “appears increasingly unlikely that we will be available to preside over the trial in this matter,” because of pending appeals and Guido’s imminent retirement.
The Pennsylvania Constitution requires all judges to retire on the last calendar day of the year in which they turn 75. For Guido, that is this year.
The Saturday evening Cook was killed, he was holding his shop open after hours at the request of someone who said they were bringing in a group of clients prepared to pay double for haircuts. Police now believe that was likely a ruse to let Baltimore make sure he could find Cook in the shop.
Baltimore is charged with entering the barbershop at 128 N. Hanover St. about 7:30 p.m. on May 22, 2021 and shooting both Cook, who owned the shop, and Anthony Lamar White,who survived. White died earlier this year, however, in a drug overdose involving a large amount of fentanyl that was believed to be a homicide.
The barbershop killing attracted a lot of media attention resulting in Cumberland County Court agreeing to bring in jurors from outside the county to impartially hear the case.
Baltimore’s online court docket — which is 56 pages long due to the volume of docket entries — lists the case as inactive. The case has not had a hearing relevant to Baltimore’s criminal charges since Aug. 9, 2024.
It is unknown which judge will be appointed to oversee the case.
Prosecutors initially asked for Guido recuse himself from the Baltimore case, and later, to stop hearing every case the Cumberland County District Attorney’s brought against defendants. Guido refused both requests.
Prosecutors believed Guido’s law clerk, Crystal Craig, and her repeated “unprofessional and unwarranted” behavior created the appearance of bias against the office.
That alleged behavior included emailing attorneys to criticize their handling of cases, aggressively confronting an attorney while the attorney was meeting with a child sexual assault victim, sitting close to the victims’ family members in court, filing right-to-know requests regarding courthouse security, scolding police and victim advocates in courthouse hallways and threatening to sue sheriff deputies.
The Superior Court sided with Guido and ruled he did not abuse his authority on whether or not to recuse. But it did say the DA’s office proved there is at least an appearance of impropriety on the part of Craig.
The Superior Court also admonished Guido for providing a “textbook example of how not to handle a recusal issue.”
“We urge the trial judge to take this admonition very seriously and, considering the persistent and consistent nature of the allegations against his law clerk, reflect on his own obligation under this section of the code,” the Superior Court wrote, citing the Code of Judicial Conduct that obliges Guido to require his staff to act in a manner consistent with his own obligations.
