Maryland Governor Commutes Death Sentences, Emptying Death Row

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSDEC. 31, 2014



Governor Martin O'Malley of Maryland in 2013. “In my judgment, leaving these death sentences in place does not serve the public good of the people of Maryland — present or future," he said in a statement. CreditJim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Gov. Martin O’Malley said Wednesday that he would commute the sentences of the state’s last four inmates on the state’s death row to life in prison, saying executing them “does not serve the public good of the people of Maryland.”

Two years ago, the General Assembly abolished the death penalty, making the harshest sentence life in prison without the possibility of parole. That left four previously sentenced inmates on death row.

The governor, who is leaving office, noted that Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler, a Democrat who is also leaving office, recently said that carrying out the death sentences would be illegal in the absence of an existing statute.

“The question at hand is whether any public good is served by allowing these essentially unexecutable sentences to stand,” Mr. O’Malley said in a statement. “In my judgment, leaving these death sentences in place does not serve the public good of the people of Maryland — present or future.”

Mr. O’Malley will leave office in January after having served two terms, the limit in Maryland. Mr. Gansler will leave office at the same time after a failed bid for the Democratic nomination for governor.

Mr. Gansler argued three weeks ago to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals that one of the inmates, Jody Lee Miles, should be resentenced to life without possibility of parole. He urged judges on the state’s intermediate appellate court to send the case back to a circuit court for a new sentence.

He outlined two main reasons. First, Maryland’s highest court ruled in 2006 in Vernon Evans Jr. vs. the State of Maryland that a legislative panel needed to approve protocols for lethal injection before an execution could take place, a step that has yet to be taken. Second, when lawmakers banned capital punishment last year, Mr. Gansler said, they also repealed a law that enabled the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services to introduce lethal injection protocols.

In addition to Mr. Miles and Mr. Evans, the remaining death-row inmates are Heath Burch and Anthony Grandison.

Mr. Miles was convicted in a 1997 death in Mardela Springs, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Mr. Evans and Mr. Grandison were convicted in a 1983 killing of two people in Baltimore County.

Mr. Burch was sentenced to death for killing a couple in 1995 in Capitol Heights, near Washington.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/01/us...death-row.html