Baltimore County Circuit Judge John F. Fader II is scheduled to decide today whether to add convicted killer Wesley Allen Rollins to the dwindling population on Maryland's death row.
In many ways, the 55-year-old Rollins, who is white, fits the characteristics of a classic Maryland death row inmate. A jury found him guilty in the murder of a white person, which studies say increases the chances of a death sentence. He was prosecuted in Baltimore County, the jurisdiction most likely to seek execution.
While Rollins denied smothering 71-year-old Irene Ebberts of Catonsville, he admitted burglarizing her home.
But if Fader agrees with prosecutors and sends Rollins to death row, it will be a move contrary to an apparent trend in Maryland and nationwide: a growing reluctance on the part of judges and juries to sentence defendants to death.
"The most recent phenomenon is a decline in death sentences, and a decline in death rows across the country," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a research group with an anti-death penalty tilt. "I think juries are hesitant, even when they find someone guilty, of giving the death penalty."
Nationwide, the number of death sentences has dropped markedly in recent years. From 1995 to 1999, judges and juries handed out an average of 300 death sentences a year. In 2001, the number fell to 155, according to the center.
Death penalty advocates attribute much of that decline to a nationwide decrease in murders. But opponents of capital punishment say juries are simply rejecting a greater number of death sentences.
In federal court, juries have decided not to give the death penalty in 18 of the last 19 cases when federal prosecutors asked for capital punishment.
"It's definitely a trend," said Michael Stark, the Baltimore-Washington coordinator of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. "The courts are beginning to look with a more critical eye to what exactly we are doing with the death penalty."
In Maryland, there have been three death sentences since 2000, compared with 10 from 1996 to 1999, according to the Division of Corrections.
At the same time, many inmates have left death row - and not because of executions.
Tyrone Gilliam, the last person to receive a lethal injection from Maryland, was executed in 1998. At that point, there were 16 inmates on death row. Now there are 10. And because of the regular flow of inmates on and off death row, the number of death sentences overturned by the court system is larger than that difference.
