Jury selection began Thursday in the first-degree murder trial of Jamaal Smith, accused of gunning down 34-year-old Dante Gladney in a Dollar Tree parking lot on the 5900 block of Belair Road late last year. Smith rejected a plea agreement covering the murder and firearms charges before the trial got underway, a decision that sends the case to a jury expected to hear roughly four days of testimony and evidence.
According to charging documents, Smith fatally shot Gladney on Dec. 3, 2025, and Gladney was pronounced dead early the next morning at Bayview Hospital. As reported by Baltimore Witness, jury selection proceeded before Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Cynthia H. Jones, with prosecutors laying out a case built heavily on surveillance video, facial identification footage, and automated license plate reader data. Smith is charged with first-degree murder, possession of a firearm during a crime of violence, firearm use in a felony or violent crime, and two counts of handgun possession in a vehicle.
Additional details from CBS News indicate that Baltimore Police officers responded to reports of a shooting on the 5900 block of Belair Road around 11:37 p.m. on Dec. 3, finding Gladney with gunshot wounds. He died shortly after midnight on Dec. 4 at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. The Dollar Tree parking lot where investigators recovered two .380-caliber shell casings sits within the Frankford neighborhood of Northeast Baltimore, a commercial and residential stretch along Maryland Route 1, per prior Hoodline reporting.
Surveillance Footage and a Silver Toyota Solara
Prosecutors say surveillance footage allegedly captured the shooting itself, showing Gladney attempting to flee before Smith allegedly fired multiple shots at him. Smith allegedly exited a silver Toyota Solara before the gunfire, according to the same account from the trial's opening proceedings. Separate footage reportedly showed the driver wearing an Orioles hat and a dark hoodie — clothing investigators say matched additional footage capturing the suspect's face approximately 20 minutes before the shooting.
License plate reader footage allegedly captured a vehicle near Belair Road and Franklin Avenue around the time of the killing, and investigators linked that vehicle — a 2000 Mercury Grand Marquis registered under a Virginia tag — to Smith. Automated license plate reader systems used by Maryland law enforcement log tag numbers with timestamped location data, a tool that has become central to how homicide investigators tie out-of-state registrations to specific crime scenes, according to Nguyen Roche. How prosecutors will definitively connect that Grand Marquis to the silver Toyota Solara allegedly driven during the shooting remains an open question heading into testimony.
Plea Rejected, Defense Pushes Back
Prosecutors offered Smith a plea agreement covering the murder and firearms violations, but the specific terms were not disclosed, and Smith declined the deal before jury selection began. Baltimore City Circuit Court procedure requires defendants to accept or reject such offers on the record before trial proceedings start, a routine but consequential step in felony cases according to Baltimore Witness, the nonprofit outlet that has closely tracked the case through pre-trial hearings.
Smith is represented by defense attorney Roya M. Hanna, a former Baltimore assistant state's attorney who ran for Baltimore City State's Attorney in 2022, according to reporting from Maryland Matters. How Hanna will challenge the surveillance and identification evidence presented to jurors is expected to shape much of the defense's strategy over the coming days.
Stakes Under Maryland Law
A first-degree murder conviction in Maryland carries a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment, with or without the possibility of parole, under state law following the legislature's abolition of capital punishment in 2013, according to FindLaw. Separately, using a firearm during a crime of violence carries a mandatory minimum of five years without parole eligibility, up to a maximum of 20 years, per Maryland Criminal Law Code § 4-204. Those non-suspendable firearm penalties would apply on top of any murder sentence if Smith is convicted on all counts.
A Corridor With a Violent Recent History
Gladney's killing came during what the Mayor's Office described as a historic drop in Baltimore violence, with 127 homicides recorded through early December 2025 — a 29% decline from the same period in 2024 and the lowest annual total the city has logged since at least 1970, according to CBS News. Yet the Belair Road corridor kept seeing violence even as citywide numbers fell. Less than two weeks after Gladney died, 54-year-old Erica Sterling was killed, and four men were injured in a shooting near Mayfield Avenue outside a counter-service restaurant on Dec. 15, 2025, as reported by WBAL Radio.
The Gladney case is one of several violent crime stories Hoodline has followed along the same stretch of road, including a separate Belair Road murder trial and an unsolved killing detailed in Hoodline's coverage of the Cyril Lynch cold case. Smith's trial is expected to continue through the week as prosecutors present the surveillance, forensic, and license plate evidence tying him to the shooting.
