Parole Commission

Gov. Parris N. Glendening won't be sending any state prisoners home early for the holidays this year -- breaking a tradition that dates at least to the 1970s.Gubernatorial spokesman Ray Feldmann said Mr. Glendening received no recommendations for the annual Christmas commutations from the Maryland Parole Commission -- and therefore, couldn't send anybody home early."He asked the question, were there any to come before him, and [the commission] said no," Mr. Feldmann said. "I know it's unusual."

A Maryland prison escapee who lived an apparently law-abiding life for eight years before being recaptured is poised to gain his freedom again soon -- this time legally.The Maryland Parole Commission has told Anthony D. Francis he will be released from the Eastern Correctional Institution, provided the state of Georgia agrees to supervise him. That's where Mr. Francis left a son, a fiancee and a job in furniture sales where colleagues knew him as "Gordon Peal.""He certainly indicates through his demeanor and past history that he will not be a threat to public safety," Leonard A. Sipes Jr., a spokesman for the parole commission, said yesterday.

Vernon Lee Clark of Elkridge appeared in court yesterday to get a new sentence for his murder conviction, but he left the courtroom with the same one he got in 1991.At a Howard Circuit Court hearing, Clark, 39, again was sentenced to life plus 28 years in prison for the 1989 murder and rape of Kathleen Patricia Gouldin, a 23-year-old Elkridge woman who was a popular bar manager at a Baltimore nightclub.The case was sent back to Circuit Court for a second sentencing hearing after the state Court of Special Appeals ruled last year that a judge could have considered sentencing Clark to life in prison without parole, the penalty originally sought by county prosecutors.

On Valentine's Day, Louella Eicher had a date with the man who killed her son.She didn't care about the long drive from Upper Marlboro to Jessup, or the forbidding gray facade of the prison, or the dark little room where she had to sit, or the sad irony of the day.She was going to be there when they decided whether Willie Brice got parole."

Terrence G. Johnson, behind bars since being involved in the shooting deaths of two Prince George's County police officers in 1978, yesterday walked out of the prison system that has been his home for most of his life.As he left the Jessup Pre-Release Unit, his father, Robert Melvin Johnson, waited outside the chain link fence. His son told him he just wanted to go home."I said, 'Let's get out of here, and don't look back,' " Mr. Johnson, 31, said a few hours after his 8:31 a.m release.He has been on work release since November, working as a clerk and researcher for Charles J. Ware, one of his lawyers.

Unhappy with dozens of last-minute appointments by his predecessor, Gov. Parris N. Glendening flatly rejected one of them yesterday, and said he is delaying many others for further review.The new governor said he is withdrawing the nomination of Welford L. McLellan, a press aide to former Gov. William Donald Schaefer, to a $62,117-a-year job on the Maryland Parole Commission.He said he is holding up many of Mr. Schaefer's other appointments while his staff looks into the nominees' qualifications.

An Anne Arundel circuit judge has rejected a request by Terrence Johnson for an order to release him, saying appeals of such a ruling would be tied up in the courts longer than the month remaining on Johnson's prison sentence.Johnson, who was convicted of one count of manslaughter in the shooting deaths of two Prince George's County police officers in 1978, was told Aug. 11 that he would be released in February if he completed 90 days of work-release.Attorney Melvin White said he also was told by a Parole Commission lawyer that his client could be released earlier if he completed the work-release agreement before Feb. 1. Johnson completed his work release Sunday.

Over the next few months, 200 of the state's oldest and least violent inmates will be considered for early release to ease crowding in Maryland's 24 prisons.The state's commissioner of correction has ordered his staff to review the files of selected inmates 46 and older who have served from 30 percent to 70 percent of their sentences. None on the list has been convicted of a violent crime, child abuse or a sex offense against a child, said Leonard A. Sipes Jr., a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.

Gov. William Donald Schaefer commuted the life sentence of a Kent County woman who burned her husband to death because she has been a "model prisoner," a spokesman said yesterday.The commutation of Dorothy Lou Stevenson's first-degree murder sentence was sharply criticized this week by the judge in the case and the victim's brother. But Joseph L. Harrison Jr., Mr. Schaefer's press secretary, defended the decision."The governor is a tough man, but he is a compassionate man. I think he sees a remorseful 53-year-old woman who made a terrible mistake 17 years ago but who has paid her debt to society, and she now wants to live some of the life she has left," Mr. Harrison said.

In a surprising footnote to the savings and loan scandal that ripped Maryland apart nine years ago, Gov. William Donald Schaefer has quietly pardoned Jerome S. Cardin, the deceased one-time owner of the infamous Old Court Savings and Loan Association.The pardon, granted Sept. 2, three days before Rosh Hashana, the start of the Jewish new year, was requested in May by Mr. Cardin's widow, Shoshana. Mrs. Cardin is a prominent activist in civic and Jewish community affairs locally and nationally, and is a longtime acquaintance of Mr. Schaefer's.