[beavus]

A fact of which I was not privy. Still, he may have dropped the sledgehammer and yelled "Please don't shoot!". A reasonable thing for even a bludgeon-armed criminal to do when faced with two people armed with guns.

[maica]

You are right in your scenario that he might have dropped the hammer and yelled "Don't shoot!" Only those three will ever know.
What is fact is that the workshop had been burgled on a regular basis; the police are impotent to stop these bottom-feeders from appropriating anything that they can sell for a few bucks; and in the dusk of a nine pm summer evening, a hammer could have looked like a very large gun.
I guess the judge gave the benefit of the doubt to the workmen. The furniture that they refinished was commercial in nature, so they worked during the hours that businesses such as bars and restaurants were closed - restoring and refinishing bar counters, etc.

Anyone working those hours in that part of the city, was living in dread of invaders at all times. Inner city Baltimore is not a healthy environment.