A mother's determination to get her daughter's case reopened has finally paid off.
Marguerite Morris has been fighting to get her daughter's case reclassified from a suicide to undetermined and reopened by the Anne Arundel County Police Department for more than a decade.
"It's been a re-traumatization, repeatedly. It's like you overcome a hurdle and you think it's over and then someone crosses. It's like they keep pulling the rug out from under you at every step," said Morris.
Marguerite got a law passed in her daughter's name. Katherine's Law mandated departments to keep cases reclassified from suicide to another determination open for 20 years.
However, the law was never supposed to be retroactive to Katherine's case.
While the medical examiner changed the manner-of-death in 2021, the death certificate wasn't amended until after the law went into effect.
Morris is currently suing Anne Arundel County to list the case as reopened and put her daughter's case on the website.
"I want them to list my daughter's case as unsolved, or open, as the law says, leaving it open for 20 years like the law says, and then they post it on their website so that we can go to the public and ask, did anyone see what happened on May 6, 2012 about 6:30 pm," said Morris.
In a recent court hearing, a judge decided that Katherine's Law does apply to Katherine's case since the death certificate wasn't changed until after the law went into effect.
"I was just amazed... I just kept listening because I kept thinking it was gonna change, almost like a, you know, really surprised because the other motions and things before that hadn't been successful, but this one finally was," said Morris.
We reached out to the Anne Arundel County Police Department, in response they said:
"The court did not make a decision to apply Katherine's Law retroactively. The court only denied the county's motion to dismiss. The case is still active and has not been decided on the merits. There has been no ruling by the court other than to deny the preliminary motion to dismiss. Given this case is still pending, we will not be commenting any further."
Marguerite is hopeful that soon the case can be reopened and more attention may bring someone with information about the case forward.
