Joseph I. Cassilly, who served as Harford County’s state’s attorney for 36 years, died Friday morning, the state’s attorney’s office announced in a post on social media Friday. He was 74.
Cassilly, who was the older brother of current Harford County Executive Bob Cassilly and ten other siblings, was first elected the county’s top prosecutor in 1982. He was reelected eight times, retiring in 2016.
He died of cardiac arrest at his home in the county, Bob Cassilly reported in a statement he shared with The Baltimore Sun.
“We all knew well from Joe’s example the true meaning of honor, patriotism, courage, and the sheer determination to succeed in the face of incredible adversity, without complaining,” Bob Cassilly wrote of himself and his brothers and sisters. “Joe was an inspiration to me and so many others.”
The state’s attorney’s Facebook post captured the legendary status Cassilly achieved in the eyes of many over the course of his career.
“He was the dean of criminal prosecutors in Maryland throughout his tenure, tackling changes in law, technology, and police procedure,” it read. “He was outspoken on his common sense approach to crime and punishment and tirelessly advocated on behalf of crime victims before the Maryland General Assembly to keep them from passing laws that were not in the best interests of crime victims or public safety.”
Cassilly was born in Harford County in December of 1950, according to his biography on a Maryland state website. He attended John Carroll High School in Bel Air and graduated as co-valedictorian, according to Bob Cassilly, and chose to enter the Army “at the height of the Vietnam War.”
It was while serving as an Army Ranger in that Cassilly was severely injured during a combat patrol in Vietnam, his brother said.
Cassilly suffered a spinal cord injury while doing a rope ladder extraction in a helicopter landing zone in early 1969, he told a Baltimore Sun reporter as part of a 2019 profile. He returned home a 19-year-old paraplegic.
His disability did not thwart his academic ambitions. He attended Harford Community College before graduating from the University of Arizona with a degree in psychology in 1974, then from the University of Baltimore School of Law three years later.
“Confined to a wheelchair, Joe attended college and law school in a world without wheelchair ramps and handicapped parking spaces,” Bob Cassilly wrote in his statement. “He refused to be defined by his injuries.”
Early in his legal career, he became known as an expert on wiretap cases, and he tried five high-profile murder cases before running for office. During his nearly four decades as the county state’s attorney, he “earned a nationwide reputation,” according to the Sun profile. Cassilly lobbied in Annapolis on legislation on behalf of prosecutors, wrote standards for the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and was responsible for establishing the first sobriety checkpoint and the first Family Justice Center in Maryland.
“It’s immeasurable how many families and lives he’s touched in so many different ways,” his successor as state’s attorney, Albert Peisinger, said shortly before Cassilly retired, and then-Harford County Executive Barry Glassman also sang his praises.
“My gut says he could have been state’s attorney as long as his mind and body held up,” Glassman said. “I don’t think anyone out there could have beat him.”
Cassilly’s reputation was tarnished, however, two years after his retirement when he was disbarred by Maryland’s highest court for withholding evidence and lying about it over the years in a case known as the Memorial Day Murders, a 1981 double killing in Abingdon. The Maryland Court of Appeals found the former prosecutor lied about documents that undermined the credibility of an FBI agent on the case.
Cassilly maintained that he had done nothing wrong but rather “fell into the whole anti-criminal justice movement, where the cops are the bad guys and the prosecutors are the bad guys,” he told a Sun reporter at the time.
The case did little to diminish his reputation in the eyes of his successors.
“Joe tried most of Harford County’s most infamous crimes, earning the respect of attorneys and judges from across the state,” the state’s attorney’s statement read. “He also touched thousands of lives including victims, witnesses, courthouse staff, and even reformed criminal defendants.”
Cassilly is survived by his wife, Diana, “his children and grandchildren, and the rest of the Cassilly family that is too big to name,” the statement read.