Karen Elizabeth
Campbell.Wrongfully convicted twice for the same act — reporting a sexual assault.
She walked into a store to fix a phone. She walked out and reported what happened. The state then prosecuted her — and on the day after her sentencing, destroyed the evidence.
She didn't know they sent police to bully a victim's grandmother to tell her daughter not to press charges.
A communications executive who became her own attorney inside one of the most violent women's prisons in the country.
Karen Elizabeth Campbell McGagh is a senior communications executive who lives in Montgomery County, Maryland. On April 24, 2017, she went into a Verizon-branded retail store in Towson to have her phone repaired. What she reported afterward — and what the State of Maryland did about it — is the reason SKInnocence Clinic exists.
While serving her sentence at one of the most violent women's prisons in the country, Karen taught herself the law. She filed her own petitions. She filed Susan Nwoga's, too. She was eventually granted relief by the Maryland Court of Special Appeals — and then convicted again by the state's highest court, on the basis of evidence her petition argues includes a fabricated psychiatrist, a confession that was never made, and surveillance footage that no longer exists.
Nine years, in dates.
Every entry below is on the public record — police reports, court dockets, appellate opinions, or correspondence from the evidence custodian.
Glenn Trebay was the salesman on shift. Over the course of approximately two hours, he engaged in repeated inappropriate physical contact with Karen, held her SIM card to prevent her from leaving, asked her personal questions, and accessed her home address through the store's computer.
The next morning — April 25, 2017, at 10:35 a.m. — he called her at home, consistent with a threat he had made the day before. The call appears in her phone records. She reported the assault to Baltimore County Police that same day. Officer Alan Heims, who took the report, characterized the conduct as sexual assault. The language describing it as criminal came from the officer, not from Karen.
Within weeks, Glenn Trebay was terminated by Cellular Sales of Maryland — fired for inappropriate touching and for selling non-Verizon products from beneath his desk. Conduct entirely consistent with what Karen had described.
Karen reported the assault directly to the State's Attorney's office. ASA Lisa Dever passed the matter to ASA Suzanne Cohen, who informed ASA Adam Lippe, who then contacted Detective Brian Wolf of the Baltimore County Police.
Detective Wolf's supplemental police report claimed the investigation originated from a call to the "Citizens' Complaint Bureau." No such bureau exists. Detective Thomas Kane confirmed this on the record. The fabricated origin concealed the truth: the prosecution of the victim originated from the very office to which she had reported being assaulted.
In 2019 the Baltimore County Sexual Assault Investigations Task Force documented that this was systemic — 56% of sexual-assault cases referred by women were declined by prosecutors. Neither the police department nor the State's Attorney's Office had any formal written policy governing those decisions.
Cellular Sales produced video from three separate cameras in response to the State's subpoena. Only one was admitted at trial. The other two were never disclosed to the defense. The trial court itself, looking at the single angle, said on the record:
"I can't say, having looked at two plus hours of video, that I know where his hands were all the time."The trial court · Circuit Court for Baltimore County
One day after Karen's sentencing — while her direct appeal was pending — ASA Lippe ordered all evidence in the case destroyed. The docket records the order. Of approximately thirty cases the same prosecutor handled in that period, this is the only one in which the evidence was destroyed.
The Pre-Sentence Investigation — described by the sentencing judge as the worst she had ever seen — attributed statements to a psychiatrist called variously Dr. Kohn, Dr. Cohn, and Lois Cohen, all within the same document. No psychiatrist or psychologist under any of those names has ever been licensed in Maryland. The Board of Physicians confirms it.
Karen's actual treating psychiatrist is Dr. Lois Conn of Lutherville-Timonium. The petition argues the fabricated name was built from hers — same first name, phonetically similar surname — meaning whoever constructed the PSI had knowledge of the real treatment relationship and used it to invent a psychiatrist who would say what the real one had not been asked.
The state's attorney was formally notified in writing on June 6, 2018 that Dr. Kohn did not exist. He continued to cite the PSI in every subsequent proceeding, including the briefing to the Supreme Court of Maryland that became the basis for the opinion reinstating the conviction.
On January 29, 2021, the Supreme Court of Maryland reinstated Karen's conviction. The opinion stated that she had "conceded during her colloquy with the trial court that the alleged touching did not occur." The trial transcript directly contradicts that characterization. Karen consistently maintained that the assault happened. Her testimony addressed only what one camera angle showed.
The same opinion described the nonexistent psychiatrist as "court-appointed" — a designation that appears nowhere in the trial record or the PSI itself. A footnote characterized a routine visit by a Baltimore Gas and Electric tree-trimmer as evidence of a "deceitful pattern of behavior." Another footnote drew a racial analogy to the 2020 Central Park birdwatching incident — every party in Karen's case is white.
Same courthouse. Same year. Same crime.
On April 20, 2018, in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County, Dallas Dance was sentenced after pleading guilty to four counts of perjury for concealing $147,000 in income while serving 111,000 schoolchildren. Karen was sentenced in the same courthouse, the same year, on one count of perjury for reporting a sexual assault.
One count of perjury for reporting a sexual assault. Conviction built on a single camera angle out of three and a psychiatrist who does not exist.
Pled guilty to four counts of perjury for concealing $147,000 in income while serving 111,000 schoolchildren as Baltimore County School Superintendent.
A sentencing disparity of seventeen to one.Same courthouse · Same year · Same statutory offense
She is fighting in federal court.
In May 2026, Karen filed a Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland — eleven grounds for relief, anchored on the actual-innocence gateway in McQuiggin v. Perkins. The petition argues that her conviction was secured through suppressed evidence, fabricated psychiatric testimony, a destroyed evidentiary record, an undisclosed business relationship between the lead detective and the prosecuting attorney, and an appellate opinion containing a confession that the trial transcript does not support.
She filed it pro se. She built it inside a women's prison. She built it for the women she met there.
If Karen's case found you — share it. And if you know one like it, tell us.
Free Always No exceptions
About this page. Every claim above is drawn directly from Karen Campbell's Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland (May 2026), the underlying trial record, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals reversal, the Supreme Court of Maryland reinstatement opinion (No. 12, Sept. Term 2020), and the cited exhibits. Statements characterizing conduct as misconduct reflect the petition's allegations and supporting evidence.