Maryland prosecutor resigns before he is sentenced for hotel-room spectacle
The state’s attorney in Cecil County, Maryland, resigned from his job on Monday, a day before he received a suspended sentence for alleged lewd acts before a glass balcony door in an Ocean City hotel room.
Edward “Ellis” Rollins III was convicted of two misdemeanors—indecent exposure and disorderly conduct—in a December trial, report the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Post and Delmarva Now.
Rollins, 61, received a suspended sentences of 90 days, along with 18 months of supervised probation, 100 hours of community service and a $1,000 fine.
Rollins was in Ocean City to speak at the conference of the Maryland State’s Attorneys’ Association. Ocean City police said at the time of Rollins’ June 2016 arrest that they were dispatched to the hotel in response to a report of a nude man on a balcony. At trial, Rollins was accused of having sex with his wife and other lewd acts inside his tenth floor hotel room at the Clarion Resort Fontainebleau Hotel, near the sliding glass balcony door.
A condominium building was across the street. Four women who testified at Rollins’ trial said he had danced naked and posed by the glass door.
Rollins testified at his sentencing that he wasn’t aware the women were watching him, according to the Delmarva Now account.
“I married my wife in 2010, and I like to think we still act like newlyweds,” Rollins said. “We had arranged a date that afternoon, and while I was waiting for her come back, I walked around the apartment, looked at the internet. I wasn’t paying any attention to the women.”
Rollins said he would have stopped his behavior if he had received a call from the hotel. “I don’t want this one hour of carelessness to be my legacy,” Rollins said. “But it looks like it is.”