Nearly two years after Maryland abolished the death penalty, Gov. Martin O’Malley says he will commute the sentences of the state’s four remaining death row inmates, changing their sentences to life without parole.
The fate of the men has remained a legal loose end since the state barred executions. It remained unclear whether the legislation repealing the death penalty made it illegal to kill the inmates, and it was left to courts or the governor to officially change their sentences and remove them from death row.
Last month, Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler called capital punishment in Maryland "illegal and factually impossible” ahead of an appeal filed by Jody Lee Miles, who remains on death row for the murder of Edward Joseph Atkinson in Wicomico County.
O'Malley said in a statement that no public good could come from keeping the four men on death row.
“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 said.
The governor said he had met with victims' families and that he hoped the move would bring them closure.
Miles, Vernon Evans, Anthony Grandison and Heath Burch will no longer face execution, though all four are expected to die in prison. John Booth-El, a fifth man on death row at the time the state abolished the death penalty, died in prison last spring.
