Oken

Convicted killer Steven Oken asked the state's highest court yesterday to halt his execution to allow him to challenge the constitutionality of Maryland's lethal injection process for putting a person to death. In Oken's stay of execution request to the Maryland Court of Appeals, lawyers Fred W. Bennett and Michael E. Lawlor wrote that "due to the insufficiency of the execution protocols and training of execution team members, the killing of Steven Oken will amount to little more than torture."

Lawyers for the state prison system responded yesterday to a lawsuit filed by death-row inmate Steven Oken, rejecting his argument that Maryland's lethal injection procedure is unconstitutional because it is akin to torture. The Maryland Attorney General's office included in its response an affidavit from an anesthesiologist that says the amount of barbiturate administered during lethal injections is enough to render an inmate unconscious. The state also filed a request for summary judgment to dismiss Oken's lawsuit, filed May 18 by his attorney, Fred W. Bennett.

Six years after convicted murderer Tyrone X. Gilliam was put to death by lethal injection, opponents of capital punishment are revisiting that execution as they work to stop another one. At a news conference yesterday outside the state penitentiary complex in Baltimore, the protesters - contending that Gilliam's execution was "botched" - supported convicted killer Steven Oken's contention that the state's method of lethal injection is akin to torture....

Convicted killer Steven Oken's lawsuit that argues the state's lethal injection process is inhumane will be heard in a Baltimore County courtroom instead of in Baltimore, the city's administrative judge ruled yesterday. Judges in Baltimore County, where Oken was sentenced to die in 1991, are better suited to hear the lawsuit because they are more familiar with the case, said Baltimore Circuit Judge Marcella A. Holland. "I don't believe the interest of justice is served by a city judge taking over," she said.

Convicted killer Steven Oken has filed a lawsuit in Baltimore Circuit Court challenging the state's lethal injection process, and has asked that a judge postpone his execution - now scheduled for the week of June 14 - while the court evaluates this most recent legal challenge. The move comes only days after Oken filed a similar motion in Baltimore County, the jurisdiction in which he was convicted and, in 1991, sentenced to death for the rape and murder of White Marsh newlywed Dawn Marie Garvin.

Attorneys for convicted killer Steven H. Oken filed a motion in Baltimore County Circuit Court yesterday asking that a judge postpone their client's execution - scheduled for the week of June 14 - because of what they say are problems with Maryland's lethal injection process. Across the country, there have been a number of recent challenges to the drug combination used in most lethal injections, with defense lawyers and death penalty opponents saying the drugs cause then mask excruciating pain.

A Baltimore County judge moved longtime death row inmate Steven Oken to the brink of execution yesterday, signing a death warrant that schedules the convicted killer to die during the week of June 14. The move came hours after the U.S. Supreme Court quashed Oken's most recent appeal, saying it would not consider his claim that the Maryland Court of Appeals decided a legal issue wrongly in his case. Prosecutors asked Baltimore County Circuit Judge John G. Turnbull II to sign the death warrant as soon as they learned of the Supreme Court's decision.

Maryland's top court upheld the way the state imposes the death penalty yesterday, dashing the hopes of death penalty opponents and moving Baltimore County killer Steven Oken closer to execution. In its 4-3 decision, the Court of Appeals rejected Oken's appeal - the fourth it has heard - saying last year's U.S. Supreme Court decision Ring vs. Arizona does not affect Maryland's capital punishment system. Oken, along with death penalty opponents, had argued that the ruling, which forced Arizona to change the way it sentenced defendants to death, also meant that Maryland's system was unconstitutional.

THANKS TO an astute editor here at The Sun, a correction, or at least a clarification, is in order regarding last Wednesday's column. The column was about how the Maryland Court of Appeals, in a fit of judicial legislating, temporarily removed convicted murderer Courtney Bryant from death row so he can be resentenced. The appeals court claimed that Baltimore County Circuit Judge Alexander Wright Jr. should have considered Bryant's age - he was 18 when he beat and stabbed 21-year-old James Stambaugh to death - as a "mitigating circumstance."

Lawyers for one of Maryland's most notorious death row inmates were once again before the Court of Appeals yesterday, this time arguing that a Baltimore County judge used an unconstitutional decision-making process when he sentenced Steven Oken to death in 1991. It was the fourth time the state's highest court has heard an appeal from Oken, who was convicted 12 years ago of raping and murdering 20-year-old Dawn Marie Garvin of White Marsh. As has become typical in these proceedings, the courtroom was packed with death penalty opponents, mournful family members and at least one person holding a sign that said Oken should die. The legal issue yesterday was whether a recent Supreme Court decision in an Arizona case means that Maryland judges and juries have been using the wrong standard of proof in deciding whether someone should be sentenced to death.