Gov. Martin O'Malley has announced plans to commute the sentences of the last four men on Death Row in Maryland before he leaves office in mid-January. UPI/Kevin Dietsch |
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ANNAPOLIS, Md., Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Gov. Martin O'Malley said Wednesday he will commute the sentences of the four remaining men on Maryland's Death Row before he leaves office.
The state abolished the death penalty in 2013, but the legislature did not make the law retroactive. O'Malley said the state attorney general has advised him Maryland no longer has an execution protocol and is unable to put anyone to death.
Before he announced his decision, he talked to the families of some of the victims of the four inmates, O'Malley said. He said he believes commuting the sentences will spare the families the ordeal of more drawn-out appeals.
"The question at hand is whether any public good is served by allowing these essentially un-executable sentences to stand," O'Malley said. "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, a Democrat who pushed for the 2013 law, leaves office in mid-January after serving two terms.
Maryland has a history of capital punishment dating back to 1638, when two men were hanged for piracy. The state passed a new death penalty law after the U.S. Supreme Court found executions constitutional in 1976 but has put only five men to death, most recently in 2005.
The number of executions across the United States dropped this year, and prosecutors and juries appear to have become more willing to accept sentences of life without parole. The Death Penalty Information Center reports that six states abolished capital punishment between 2007 and 2013, although none have done so since.
The four men whose lives will be spared are Vernon Evans and Anthony Grandison, who killed a couple in a 1983 contract killing in a Baltimore-area motel, Jody Lee Miles, who killed a man during a 1997 robbery in Salisbury, and Heath William Burch, who killed an elderly couple during a burglary in Capital Heights in 1995. John Booth-El, who was given a death sentence for a double homicide in 1983, died of natural causes earlier this year.