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Already serving a 35-year bid for a robbery and weapons violation in Baltimore in 2009, an Anne Arundel County judge sentenced Courtney Butler, 35, to life in prison plus 10 years for an attack in 2021 inside the facility.
Prosecutors say that on March 25, 2021, Butler and his victim were involved in an argument about the distribution of juice boxes, including a threat made by the former toward the latter over the incident.
On the day of his attempted murder attempt, officials said that over the course of six hours, Butler was seen repeatedly making trips past his victim’s cell to intimidate him, and he later made a phone call explaining to a woman that he was going to get in trouble and lose his job as an Inmate Worker at the Jessup Correctional Institution.
The woman implored Butler not to go through with his precarious plan, but he refused, and went after his victim at approximately 6:30 p.m. that night as he sat down at a telephone bank in the facility’s dayroom.
Butler walked up from behind and stabbed his victims multiple times with a “knife-like object” before throwing him to the ground. The victim was then rushed to the University of Maryland Medical Center’s Shock Trauma Unit for treatment of his injuries.
Following a days-long trial, a judge found Butler guilty of:
- First-degree attempted murder;
- Second-degree attempted murder;
- First-degree assault;
- Reckless endangerment;
- Weapons violations.
“To attempt to take a life over something so trivial is extremely disturbing and shows the defendant has no regard for human life,” State’s Attorney Anne Colt Leitess said. “This wasn’t a spur of the moment crime as the defendant stewed and planned this attack.”
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