Parole Commission

The Maryland Parole Commission, meeting in Baltimore, granted boxer Mike Tyson parole yesterday. As long as Indiana authorities, for whom the heavyweight champion is also serving time, agree, Tyson's release should occur by June 4.In a news release, the parole commission said it based some of the decision on "the expressed intent of the victims" that Tyson "should not have been incarcerated" for attacking two motorists in Gaithersburg last summer.In a 5-1 vote, the parole board decided Tyson will have a two-year supervised release -- he will have to report twice a month to parole officials who could revoke parole and return the boxer to jail.

The tough-on-crime platform that led Gov. Parris N. Glendening to all but abolish parole for inmates serving life sentences will be challenged today in Maryland's highest court.The case represents the toughest challenge to the no-parole policy, said David C. Wright, attorney for Prisoner's Rights Information Systems of Maryland Inc. If inmate Walter E. Lomax succeeds in the state's Court of Appeals, the ruling could affect the sentences of about 2,000 inmates serving life sentences.The case stems from Glendening's 1995 statements that he would not grant parole to anyone serving a life sentence and that he had ordered the parole commission not to forward him any recommendations, except for very old or terminally ill inmates.

Arthur Herman Bremer, who paralyzed former Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace and then spurned his offers of forgiveness, has argued he should be freed from prison because shooting "segregationist dinosaurs" is not as serious as harming mainstream politicians.The comments came in an angry, disjointed letter that Bremer wrote to Maryland parole officials last year and that was obtained yesterday by The Sun. Wallace died Sunday at 79.Bremer has never publicly discussed his case. The three-page letter and a 33-page transcript of Bremer's 1996 parole hearing provide the new clues about his feelings toward the Southern populist who "stood in the schoolhouse door," as he once bragged, in a failed attempt to keep blacks out of the University of Alabama.

A man being sought in the killing of a 91-year-old Baltimore woman could have been jailed two months before the slaying on a parole violation, but a record noting his status was mysteriously altered in his prison file, authorities confirmed yesterday.The alteration, discovered in a review of records by The Sun, has prompted an investigation of parole officers, including the son of the director of parole and probation, said Leonard A. Sipes Jr., spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.

WESTOVER -- Sheila Harding watched from behind a glass wall as the man who murdered her daughter with three blasts from a shotgun explained why he should be let out on parole after serving half of his 30-year sentence.It was not the first time Harding has watched James Oldenburg plead his case to the Maryland Parole Commission. But at this hearing, she got to do something that crime victims have only recently been allowed to do in Maryland.She got to have her say before Oldenburg and the commission.

An article in yesterday's editions described Gov. Parris N. Glendening's directive to the Parole Commission not to release murderers or rapists as an executive order. No such formal order was issued, although a judge overturning the governor's new policy described it as having the same effect as an executive order.Pub Date: 9/18/97

John C. Dortch is a decorated Vietnam veteran, a law school graduate and a convicted murderer. He will not be a lawyer in Maryland, the state's highest court has ruled.Dortch, 51, was denied admission to the Maryland bar yesterday when the Court of Appeals said he cannot practice law while on parole for his role in the 1974 slaying of a police officer. Dortch's parole is for life."A person on parole is still serving a prison sentence, albeit, beyond the prison walls," Judge Howard S. Chasanow wrote in a 15-page ruling.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening replaced the longtime head of the (( Maryland Parole Commission yesterday with Patricia K. Cushwa, advocate for victims' rights and a member of the parole panel since 1992.Cushwa, 58, will succeed Paul J. Davis, who has been chairman of the eight-member commission since 1988 but was not reappointed by Glendening at the expiration of his term in December.Cushwa, who helped start a victims' advocacy group in her Washington County home 20 years ago, said her appointment is a "strong signal that victims matter."

A Baltimore circuit judge overturned yesterday a 2-year-old executive order by Gov. Parris N. Glendening that blocked inmates serving life sentences for rape and murder from seeking parole.Judge Richard T. Rombro said that Glendening did not have the authority to issue the order he gave to the state's Parole Commission in September 1995, in which he told commissioners "not to even recommend -- to not even send to my desk -- a request for parole for murderers and rapists."Glendening did make two exceptions in his order -- one for "very old age" or terminal illness.

As his execution rapidly approached, condemned killer Flint Gregory Hunt lost another attempt yesterday to delay it.Judge Joseph H. H. Kaplan rejected Hunt's petition to force the Maryland Parole Commission to review and make recommendations on two petitions for clemency Hunt filed with the governor.Hunt lawyer Fred Warren Bennett told Kaplan that the commission's failure to make recommendations on the petitions violated state law, which says the commission shall review and make recommendations to the governor on all petitions for commutation and clemency.

The nomination of Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr.'s son for a District Court judgeship is prompting a vow of resignation from at least one member of the Anne Arundel County Judicial Nominating Commission and raising old questions of nepotism and political interference. Thomas V. Miller III, a 12-year veteran of the Maryland Parole Commission, was passed over by the 13-member nominating commission in February when he applied for one of three vacant positions. But after Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, issued an executive order in April requiring all such panels to produce at least three nominations per vacancy, the commission voted Wednesday night to recommend Miller and four other previously rejected candidates for a spot on the bench.

The chairman of the Maryland Parole Commission told lawmakers yesterday that counties across the state have failed to hold parole hearings for eligible inmates and that better communication is necessary among local officials, the parole commission and the Maryland Division of Parole and Probation. During a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, commission Chairman David R. Blumberg also said counties need to standardize the parole process for inmates of local detention centers. "If we use the same procedure in every jurisdiction, then we won't have people falling through the cracks," he said.

When Arthur Bremer walks out of a Maryland prison in a few months after 35 years behind bars, the would-be assassin will leave without having received psychological or mental health treatment that could have helped him adjust to life on the outside, the state's Parole Commission chairman said yesterday. Bremer, who shot Democratic presidential candidate George C. Wallace in Laurel in 1972, has refused to participate in mental health treatment programs while incarcerated, said David R. Blumberg, chairman of the commission, adding that it could be made a condition of Bremer's release that he see a counselor regularly and that he could be returned to prison if he didn't comply.

Arthur Bremer, who shot and paralyzed Democratic presidential candidate George C. Wallace during a Laurel campaign event in 1972, will be released from a Maryland prison before year's end, state officials said. Bremer, a loner from Milwaukee who attempted to find fame by targeting the then-Alabama governor and one-time segregationist, has served 35 years of a 53-year sentence. He is expected to win early freedom from the Maryland Correctional Institution-Hagerstown as a result of "good conduct credits" earned by being a prison education aide, among other responsibilities.

Man who violated probation was guilty in '89 murder of his mother A convicted murderer who spent years in prison before regaining his freedom through a reduced sentence, only to have his probation revoked, was mistakenly released this week after serving less than three months of a new seven-year term, a state parole commission official said yesterday. Brian J. Dancik, convicted in 1989 of beating his mother to death in her Pikesville home, was set free after serving 76 days of the seven-year prison term imposed in June.

The chairman of the state parole commission said yesterday that no commissioners have ever recommended parole for a teenage inmate who spent almost a year of his prison sentence in a local pretrial detention center. Moshe Khaver, 19, was sentenced in November to five years in prison after pleading guilty to first-degree assault. Khaver admitted in court that he had run over another teenager, who spent five weeks in a coma and suffered permanent injuries, during a dispute over $20 in marijuana.

Del. Carmen Amedori, a Republican who represents northeast Carroll County, has been tapped to fill a vacancy on the Maryland Parole Commission, according to the county's Republican Central Committee. Michelle Jefferson, chairwoman of Carroll's central committee, said yesterday that "we are hearing that it is supposed to be official as of July 1. Until it comes from the governor's office, it's not 100 percent." Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s office is keeping mum, declining to comment on personnel issues.

Del. Carmen Amedori, a Republican who represents northeast Carroll County, has been tapped to fill a vacancy on the Maryland Parole Commission, according to the county's Republican Central Committee. Michelle Jefferson, chairwoman of Carroll's central committee, said yesterday that "we are hearing that it is supposed to be official as of July 1. Until it comes from the governor's office, it's not 100 percent." Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s office declined to comment on personnel issues.

Del. Carmen Amedori, a Republican who represents northeast Carroll County, has been tapped to fill a vacancy on the Maryland Parole Commission, according to the county's Republican Central Committee. Michelle Jefferson, chairwoman of Carroll's central committee, said yesterday that "we are hearing that it is supposed to be official as of July 1. Until it comes from the governor's office, it's not 100 percent." Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s office declined to comment on personnel issues.

VICTIMS' RIGHTS advocates have finally prevailed in their drive to limit the freedom of Maryland judges to reduce a defendant's sentence. And that is as it should be. Marylanders have a right to expect that a sentence imposed at trial will stand. It's not an unreasonable expectation, but a few judges in some well-publicized cases in recent years have allowed convicted murderers to skip out on their sentences, leaving victims and their families aghast and upset. The state's highest court last week adopted a rules change that gives trial judges only five years from the imposition of sentence to reduce it. Until now, Maryland has been unique in the country in the discretion it gives judges to reconsider a sentence.