Court papers show that Ramos had filed a defamation suit against the newspaper in 2012. But a judge threw out the lawsuit and said Ramos "fails to come close to alleging a case of defamation." A Maryland appeals court further concluded that everything printed in the July 31, 2011 newspaper story about Ramos appeared to be true.
According to the court case, Ramos had pleaded guilty on July 26, 2011 in Anne Arundel County on a charge of criminal harassment and got a 90-day suspended jail sentence. Five days later, the Capital ran a story by staff writer Eric Thomas Hartley under the headline "Jarrod wants to be your friend."