Gov. William Donald Schaefer's grant of commutations to eight women who had been chronically abused by partners they had killed or injured was a fully justifiable and informed decision. The decision also was well within Maryland's commutation tradition.
The universal assumptions underlying the executive commutation power are that human judgment is fallible and that mercy is an inseparable component of justice. For many years, these important values have been reflected in the commutation decisions of Maryland's governors.
Around the turn of the century, Maryland governors began using the commutation power to mitigate the harshness of sentences. From 1911 through 1913, 156 prisoners were released from prison as a result of commutations. Every elected governor in modern times -- Lane, McKeldin, Tawes, Agnew, Mandel, Hughes and Schaefer -- has exercised this historic power.
Although the written justifications for executive commutations in Maryland have been sketchy, several important themes emerge from available commutation decisions, particularly decisions commuting death sentences to life imprisonment. Maryland's governors have commuted sentences of prisoners whose guilt they doubted, but they have not required proof of innocence as a condition of commutation. Instead, commutations have been granted to admittedly guilty prisoners who had limited intellectual capacity, who were emotionally disturbed or who had grown up or lived in particularly traumatic family environments.
In the cases of the eight women whose sentences Governor Schaefer commuted, the histories of domestic violence were directly related to the crimes. These compelling histories were provided to Governor Schaefer, not only in the comprehensive 250-page report prepared by the Public Justice Center's Domestic Violence Task Force and the House of Ruth, but also in the individual prisoner files that are kept by the state prison system. These prisoner files included presentence investigation reports, which contained the prosecutors' views about the facts of the cases and the culpability of the women.
In making his decision, Governor Schaefer had as much information before him as is ever available -- or need be available -- to determine whether the mercy that is the hallmark of executive commutation justified sentence reductions.
