Convicted murderer Michael Whittlesey, who spent more than two years on death row for the 1982 killing of a Baltimore County teenager before the sentence was voided in favor of a life prison term, was back in court yesterday to ask that his punishment be further reduced.
His attorney argued during a hearing in Baltimore County Circuit Court that a judge erred in 1984 in sentencing Whittlesey to consecutive prison terms of 10 years and 15 years for robbery and theft convictions stemming from the disappearance of 17-year-old Jamie Griffin.
Donald E. Zaremba, Baltimore County's deputy public defender, asked a judge yesterday to take 15 years off Whittlesey's prison term, offering a technical legal argument that the robbery and theft convictions should have been merged into one count for the purposes of sentencing.
After Griffin's remains were found in 1990 in a shallow grave in Gunpowder Falls State Park, Whittlesey was convicted of murder and sentenced to die. But in 1997, after Maryland's highest court voided Whittlesey's death sentence, then-Baltimore County Circuit Judge James T. Smith Jr. - now the county executive - rejected a renewed plea for the death penalty and sentenced Whittlesey to life in prison.
Yesterday, the victim's relatives said that Whittlesey, now 40, deserves no more breaks.
"He's got a lot of nerve to come back again," Charles Griffin, one of Jamie Griffin's uncles, said in an interview at the courthouse after yesterday's hearing. "He got his life back when Jim Smith took him off death row, and he's still not satisfied. I just can't believe it after all that."
During yesterday's hearing, prosecutor John Cox said the robbery and theft sentences should stand because the court determined in 1984 that the robbery ended with Griffin's murder and that Whittlesey's subsequent theft of the Griffin family car was a separate crime warranting its own sentence.
Judge Vicki Ballou-Watts said she will consider the attorneys' arguments and issue a written decision.
The hearing was the latest development in a case that began April 2, 1982, the day Griffin was last seen alive with Whittlesey, a former classmate from Dulaney High School.
Unable to locate the body of the young pianist, authorities initially charged Whittlesey only with robbing Griffin of his wallet and car keys, and stealing the car. He was convicted and sentenced to a total of 25 years.
