At the direction of Gov. Martin O’Malley, a group headed by an academic researcher will investigate decades of abuse endured by African American patients at the Crownsville State Hospital. Citizens and civil rights activists spoke at Wednesday’s Legislative Black Caucus hearing of a long history of mistreatment of Crownsville patients due to overcrowding, underfunding, and inadequate staffing at the facility, which was founded in 1911 as the Hospital for the Negro Insane and closed in 2004.