"I recognize that when you seek the ultimate punishment, sometimes reasonable minds can differ," he said. "But I still believe that we need to keep this sentence around for the next correctional officer who gets killed or the next police officer who gets killed, because it's still a very important tool to have in our arsenal."
In sentencing proceedings, Morris' lawyers referred to two Baltimore County cases in 2003, when Circuit Judge Dana M. Levitz twice decided to sentence convicted killers to life in prison in death-eligible cases, explaining that he was loath to impose a death sentence because of the impact of its "unending" appeals process on victims' families.
Manck, in making his decision, pointed to the cases of Vernon Lee Evans Jr. and Anthony Grandison, who were sentenced to death for killings that occurred in 1983 and are still on death row.
FOR THE RECORD - An article in Tuesday's editions about a Howard County capital sentencing hearing reported that it has been a decade since a death sentence was imposed in Maryland that was not subsequently overturned by the state's appellate courts. During the same period, however, there have been two death sentences imposed by federal juries in Maryland that have not been overturned.
Tracey Wroten said she doesn't believe Morris is sorry.
"There will be no forgiving Morris for this crime and pain he has caused my daughters and son," Wroten wrote in a statement.
Manck told the members of the Wroten family in court yesterday that after two years, they will now be able to think of only the good memories of Jeffery Wroten.
The judge's 80-year-old mother, Beatrice Lippman Manck, was stabbed to death in 1995 at her apartment in Northwest Baltimore in an apparent robbery.
"Tomorrow when you wake up, it'll be the first time you won't have to come to court," Manck, a retired Anne Arundel County circuit judge, told the victim's family in Howard County Circuit Court yesterday.
"Tomorrow, those memories of Mr. Wroten you can embrace and enjoy. I'm not telling you this as a judge for 19 years, but candidly as someone who sat where you sat," Manck said.
"I wish and hope that you find peace with all of this."
tyeesha.dixon@baltsun.com jennifer.mcmenamin@baltsun.com
