BALTIMORE — Pro-life leaders are condemning what they call a “slap on the wrist” sentence for a man who brutally assaulted two elderly Christians outside a Baltimore Planned Parenthood.
Patrick Brice, 28, was convicted of second-degree assault and reckless endangerment for the 2023 attack that left 73-year-old Mark Crosby with shattered facial bones and permanent eye damage, and 84-year-old Dick Schaefer unconscious. Despite prosecutors seeking 10 years in prison, Baltimore Circuit Judge Yvette M. Bryant ordered only one year of home detention and three years of probation.
“This was a vicious, targeted assault on two senior citizens whose only ‘offense’ was praying for expectant mothers,” said Thomas More Society President Tom Brejcha. “This crime deserves far more serious consequences than a ‘get out of jail free’ card.”
Surveillance video shows Brice handing a drink to a clinic escort before charging Schaefer into a concrete planter, then tackling Crosby as he tried to help.
Christian attorneys point to precedent showing harsher punishments in similar cases. In People v. Perkins (2010), a man who struck a 69-year-old anti-abortion protester in California received five years in prison. In contrast, federal prosecutors have aggressively used the FACE Act against pro-life activists — such as the high-profile U.S. v. Houck case in Philadelphia — but rarely when pro-life Christians are victims.
“This double standard is unmistakable,” said Crosby’s attorney, Terrell Roberts. “There’s no question Brice caused serious physical injury, yet the punishment ignores precedent and justice alike.”
For years, Crosby prayed outside the Baltimore clinic to “let scared, young abortion-minded women know that they are loved, that their baby is loved,” said Jay Walton of Baltimore County Right to Life. Now, pro-life advocates warn that such public witness will only grow more dangerous if courts fail to protect those targeted for their faith.
