A federal jury on Monday spared the life of drug dealer Patrick Albert Byers Jr. for the 2007 contract killing of a murder witness, delivering instead a sentence of four consecutive life terms for a man whose criminal activities continued even while he was behind bars.
The case brought renewed attention to two major obstacles to justice in Baltimore - witness intimidation and contraband cell phones. From prison, Byers, 24, used a cell phone to order the hit on Carl Stanley Lackl, a 38-year-old Rosedale man who was fatally shot in front of his children as he waited outside his home to meet a potential buyer for a car.
Even as the trial was about to begin, prosecutors said Byers had again gained access to a phone and intimidated a second witness into recanting his testimony. After the sentence was handed down Monday, U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett said Byers would be quickly transported out of state and would never set foot in Maryland again.
U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein called Lackl a "hero who deserves to be remembered" for stepping forward as a witness, and said that the federal Bureau of Prisons had measures to ensure that Byers would be "completely cut off from contact with the outside world."
"Whatever is the most serious punishment available, that is what you will get if you attack a witness," Rosenstein said. "We ask for the most serious punishment in the most serious cases."
The jury, whose members were kept anonymous during the five-week trial as an extra security measure, took about three hours over two days to determine that it could not reach a unanimous decision on the death penalty. All 12 jurors must agree on a death sentence in federal capital cases.
Byers, who blew kisses to family members but remained expressionless as his fate was delivered, could have become the first person to receive the federal death penalty in Maryland since 2005.
Outside the federal courthouse, Lackl's mother tearfully said she was satisfied with the sentence.
"My family will be fine with this verdict," Marge Shipley said. "I hope people would never feel that they shouldn't do the right thing, because [Lackl] did the right thing. The outcome was just pretty bad. He should have never died that way."
Lackl was lured outside his home and shot three times on July 2, 2007, eight days before a state murder trial against Byers was scheduled to begin. After another man recanted, Lackl was the only eyewitness left to identify Byers as the gunman in that case, which was dropped after Lackl was killed.
