Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley announced on Wednesday that he would empty the state’s death row by commuting the sentences of four inmates who are currently awaiting execution.
“In my judgment, leaving these death sentences in place does not serve the public good of the people of Maryland — present or future,” O’Malley said in a statement. “Gubernatorial inaction at this point in the legal process would, in my judgment, needlessly and callously subject survivors, and the people of Maryland, to the ordeal of an endless appeals process, with unpredictable twists and turns, and without any hope of finality or closure.”
O’Malley is a Democrat who will leave office in January and may seek the presidency in 2016.
Under the governor’s order, four men who had been sentenced to death will have their sentences commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. These four men are Heath Burch, Vernon Evans Jr., Anthony Grandison and Jody Lee Miles. Evans and Grandison received the death sentences for the 1983 murders of two people at a motel.
Scott D. Shellenberger, the Baltimore County state’s attorney, criticized O’Malley’s decision but called it “not unexpected.”
“I’m very disappointed in the decision,” Shellenberger said. “These sentences were lawful and remain lawful. They were imposed by a jury. Numerous judges have affirmed these convictions, and it’s interesting that in the last 21 days of the administration, that suddenly he has decided to show mercy on individuals who showed absolutely no mercy to the victims of their crimes.”
O’Malley’s decision comes at the culmination of years of debate in Maryland about capital punishment. Most recently, Maryland’s state attorney general, Douglas F. Gansler, said in November that Miles’s pending death sentence was “unenforceable” because the Maryland Division of Corrections lacked the authority to issue a protocol for lethal injections.
Maryland’s legislature voted in March 2013 to repeal the death penalty, and O’Malley signed the measure into law less than two months later. The law did not alter existing death sentences.
