Prison

I would like to talk about the death penalty issue being discussed in Annapolis ("Senators wrestle with death penalty vote," Jan. 28). The problem I have with the death penalty is that when a person kills someone, the killer will not die for his actions. He will have a life in prison with free medical care, free food, free clothes and free heat and air conditioning and watch television. If they need a kidney or heart transplant, they can be on the waiting list for a donor organ. Gov. Martin O'Malley is wrong when he said that it cost too much money to have a death penalty.

John Merzbacher, a former South Baltimore parochial school teacher convicted of raping a student, will remain in prison after the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a decision Friday that could have set him free. In an emotional victory for the former students named in civil lawsuits and identified by prosecutors as his victims, the court ruled that Merzbacher is not entitled to a plea deal that his lawyers argued should have been offered to him nearly 20 years ago. "This is a man who held a loaded gun to my head at ages 11 and 12 and 13 and threatened to kill me if I ever told," said Elizabeth Ann Murphy, a former student raped by Merzbacher in the 1970s at Catholic Community Middle School.

I once sat with a group of inner-city Baltimore kids, mostly 12-year-olds, who were being asked what they wanted to be when they grew up. Police officer. Prison guard. Judge. Those were the boys at least. The girls mostly seemed to aspire to cosmetology, which was depressing in its own way. There's nothing wrong, of course, with being a cop or corrections officer or a judge. But the fact that no other jobs came to mind reflected how very narrow was their world: You were either the guy getting arrested, tried and jailed, or the guy doing the arresting, trying and jailing.

Upset that his mother would not pay off his debt to drug dealers, Genesis Collins Jr. set himself on fire and embraced her, leaving Audrey Collins with burns that ultimately killed her, prosecutors said. On Wednesday, a Baltimore jury convicted Collins, 42, of manslaughter and other charges in connection with the attack. He faces as much as 40 years in prison when he is sentenced in March. Jeremy Reed, Genesis Collins' nephew and Audrey Collins' grandson, said the family felt some relief that he had been convicted but that there was no real feeling of closure.

Two men were sentenced to 10 years in prison this week as federal prosecutors seek to close the books on a large illegal drug ring they say operated out of Latrobe Homes in East Baltimore. Judges sentenced Raymond Williams, 36, on Thursday, and Melvin Thompson, 31, on Tuesday. The two were charged in a case officials called Operation Usual Suspects that nabbed a total of 66 defendants in March 2011, including "The Wire" actress Felicia "Snoop" Pearson. Numerous other defendants have been sentenced to up to 12 years in prison.

A trick-or-treating teenager who shot at another group of teens on Halloween 2010, killing one, was sentenced to 115 years in prison Thursday by a Baltimore County judge. Sterlin Corday Matthews, 19, was found guilty in October of second-degree murder and other charges in the killing of Dequan Burks. On the night of Burks' death, Matthews was wearing a "Hellraiser" mask with pins protruding from it when his group of friends encountered a group of teens that had crossed into their neighborhood.

A Bel Air man was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison Tuesday after he pleaded guilty to selling prescription drugs on dozens of occasions, the U.S. Department of Justice announced. Ronnie Stocks, 34, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute and possession with intent to distribute the drug Oxycodone. He was sentenced by a U.S. District court judge to 101/2 years in prison with three years of probation. Harford County detectives said Stocks had about three dozen customers and typically sold them drugs in amounts less than $100.

A Glen Burnie man was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison for the first-degree murder of a man outside a bar in Glen Burnie, according to a spokeswoman for the Anne Arundel County prosecutors. Anne Arundel County Circuit Court Judge Ronald A. Silkworth ordered that Clayton A. Battle, 35, begin his sentence after he completes an eight-year prison term on a drug conviction. Battle pleaded guilty last February to fatally shooting Kelly T. Fisher, a 30-year-old Glen Burnie resident, outside Dietrich's Tavern on Dec. 4, 2010.

A Pasadena man has been sentenced to life in prison for killing his wife as she was preparing to leave him. Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Alison L. Asti sentenced Stephen Richard Salb, 58, on Friday, agreeing with the sentence prosecutors sought for the July 2011 fatal stabbing of Jill Teets Salb, 38. "It was the ultimate in domestic violence," said prosecutor Anne Colt Leitess. "She was going to leave him and he wasn't going to have that. " Leitess said the victim had nine stab wounds, but more than 100 cuts - which Leitess said indicated that she tried to fight off her husband.

As a federal judge handed down a sentence that will virtually ensure Perry Roark spends the rest of his life behind bars, the founder of Maryland's largest home-grown prison gang renounced his association with the group. Roark, a hulking man known as "Rock," was sentenced to life in a prison Monday for his role in creating Dead Man Inc., an organization of white inmates that prosecutors said has since spread to other states and led to street violence throughout the Baltimore region.