Seek The Death

WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Janet Reno offered yesterday to help the small town of Jasper, Texas, with its prosecution of three white men in the hate-crime killing of a disabled black man in order to avoid letting "dollars become part of the equation of justice."Prosecutors in the rural logging town of about 8,000 people are struggling with the costs of trying not only that case but an earlier murder case as well.The community must find the resources for prosecutions that could seek the death penalty in the highly publicized slaying of James Byrd Jr., who was chained and dragged to his death behind a pickup truck in the early hours of June 7, and in the bludgeoning death of a local builder May 31.Jasper District Attorney James Gray is awaiting final results of laboratory tests before deciding whether to seek the death penalty in the Byrd case.

Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy announced yesterday that she is seeking the death penalty against Joseph Ray Metheny in the killings of two women -- the first time the prosecutor has sought the ultimate punishment since taking office two years ago.Metheny, 42, has claimed that he has killed up to 10 people, including two homeless men he was acquitted of bludgeoning to death last year.Metheny is charged with first-degree murder and robbery in the killings of Kimberly Lynn Spicer, 23, and Cathy Ann Magaziner, ++ 39. Police say he confessed to both killings, but Metheny pleaded not guilty to the charges yesterday.

State law should be changed to require monitoring of spouses and intimates who pose a threat to current or former family members, county and municipal officials said yesterday.The demand -- which arose during the County Commissioners' quarterly meeting with the mayors of Carroll's eight municipalities -- came in response to three recent slayings in Hampstead, all of them related to domestic violence.An estranged husband and a former boyfriend have been accused of the killings. One of the victims had sought and received a court protective order.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- As the mother of a Unabomber victim, Bessie Dudley said she had no hesitation last month when a federal prosecutor telephoned her suburban Sacramento home."

In Maryland, the route to death row usually leads through Baltimore County.The county's prosecutors seek the death penalty -- and the county's jurors impose it -- more often than anywhere else in the state, legal experts say.Of the 13 convicted killers on death row in Maryland, eight committed their crimes in Baltimore County, and prosecutors in the county are seeking the death penalty in four other murder cases. The county, with 14 percent of the state's population, has brought about half of the state's death penalty cases since 1978, when Maryland reinstated capital punishment.

NEW YORK -- Insistent that the three men accused of killing a police officer last week should face the death penalty, Gov. George E. Pataki took the case away yesterday from the Bronx district attorney who refused to quickly declare whether he would seek death sentences.The move by Mr. Pataki brought the promise of a legal challenge from the rejected prosecutor, Robert T. Johnson."We cannot have different standards and different laws in different parts of this state," Mr. Pataki said. "We cannot have the death penalty in New York state, except for the Bronx."

Daniel Scott Harney, accused of killing his estranged wife and fleeing Maryland with their two young sons the day after Christmas, will not face the death penalty, Howard County State's Attorney Marna McLendon announced yesterday.Ms. McLendon said the prosecution does not meet the state's legal requirements to seek the death penalty for Mr. Harney, accused of killing 40-year-old Shirley Scott Harney Dec. 26 at her Ellicott City home.In first-degree murder cases, the law requires prosecutors to find at least one of 10 "aggravating circumstances."

As Howard County prosecutors prepare for two high-profile murder trials, State's Attorney Marna McLendon has established the county's first formal policy to help decide when the death penalty should be sought.The policy, which took effect March 3, allows relatives of victims and even defense attorneys to have a say in determining whether prosecutors should seek the death penalty in first-degree murder cases.Advocates for victim's rights welcomed the new policy, although defense attorneys gave the procedures a mixed review.

The Baltimore man charged in the 1993 strangulation of Columbia teen-ager Tara Allison Gladden will not face the death penalty, Howard County State's Attorney Marna McLendon announced yesterday.Ms. McLendon said the circumstances of the slaying do not meet the state's strict legal requirements to support the death penalty for 29-year-old Curtis Aden Jamison, now in prison for having sex with two other girls.Attorney David Harvis, a Gladden family friend and spokesman, said the Gladdens have "mixed feelings" about Ms. McLendon's decision against the death penalty and the law that influenced her decision.

Daniel Scott Harney, accused of killing his estranged wife and fleeing Maryland with their two young sons the day after Christmas, will not face the death penalty, Howard County State's Attorney Marna McLendon announced yesterday.Ms. McLendon said the prosecution does not meet the state's legal requirements to seek the death penalty for Mr. Harney, accused of killing 40-year-old Shirley Scott Harney at her Ellicott City home.In first-degree murder cases, the law requires prosecutors to find at least one of 10 "aggravating circumstances."

Federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for a 23-year-old man accused of orchestrating from prison the murder-for-hire of a Baltimore County man who had witnessed a killing in the city, according to a notice filed in U.S. District Court yesterday. A superseding indictment alleges that Albert Byers Jr., of Baltimore, paid at least $2,500 to co-defendants to fatally shoot Carl Stanley Lackl in July 2007 outside his Rosedale home. Authorities have said Lackl had witnessed Byers shoot a man in an East Baltimore alley a year earlier.

Today, Maryland is in a unique position to get out of the business of executing prisoners. A de facto moratorium exists here, stemming from an appeals court decision that invalidated the state's protocols on administering the death penalty. And even if the irregularities in the protocols were fixed, it's unlikely any of the five men on death row would be executed, because Gov. Martin O'Malley adamantly opposes the death penalty. Even Scott D. Shellenberger, state's attorney for Baltimore County - which leads the state in death penalty cases - has pledged to revise his office's practice of seeking capital punishment in all eligible cases.

Prosecutors should automatically seek the death penalty against inmates serving life terms who stand accused of killing corrections officers. That doesn't even need debating, does it? Well, there should probably be no debate. But discussing it with the victims' family members should be standard policy, and that's what Anne Arundel County prosecutors did in the case of corrections officer David McGuinn. But what happens if the family members of those victims don't want the death penalty?

Anne Arundel County prosecutors will seek the death penalty for two prisoners charged in the stabbing death of a correctional officer inside the Maryland House of Correction in July, the county state's attorney announced yesterday. The decision was made after consulting with prosecutors, Maryland State Police investigators and the family of David McGuinn, the 42-year-old correctional officer who was killed the night of July 25. "The family is very supportive of the death penalty in this case," said State's Attorney Frank R. Weathersbee.

Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy has been consistent about what she says it takes for her to seek a criminal's death, something she has done just twice in her 11 years on the job. "It should be a case that is just so shocking to the conscience that it cries out for the death penalty," she said four years ago. Only a week ago, she reiterated that same point: "It should be reserved for those individuals who commit the most heinous crimes."...

Federal prosecutors in Maryland said yesterday that they will seek the death penalty against a Baltimore man accused of killing four people, but not against two brothers charged with employing him as part of a violent West Baltimore drug organization. The announcement focused on Eric Hall, 35, of Baltimore, who was indicted last year and charged in two killings in Baltimore. Papers filed in U.S. District Court now link Hall to two additional deaths. "When considering the death penalty, we don't just look at the facts and circumstances alleged in the indictment, but the defendant's entire life history," Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said yesterday.

THE FATE of Wesley Eugene Baker, a death row inmate, is now in the hands of Maryland's highest court. We hope that the Court of Appeals justices won't tolerate a penalty that has been shown to be seriously flawed - in both racial and geographic terms - in its application around the state. At the least, they should allow a lower court to consider whether those inconsistencies tainted Mr. Baker's case. Mr. Baker, a black man who is now 47, was convicted of killing a 49-year-old white woman, Jane Tyson, in a shopping mall parking lot and was sentenced to death in 1992.

Four days after a Baltimore County judge signed a death warrant for convicted murderer Vernon L. Evans Jr., the man's lawyers asked the judge yesterday to postpone the execution and overturn a sentence that they contend was based on a "racially discriminatory" application of the death penalty by Baltimore County prosecutors. The legal pursuit launches Evans' attorneys into the company of a growing number of advocates for death-row inmates who have based appeals of their sentences on a University of Maryland study conducted by Professor Raymond Paternoster that found geographic and racial disparities in the application of the death penalty.

In a case being closely watched by both sides in the death penalty debate, the Maryland attorney general is asking the state's highest court to erase an Anne Arundel County ruling that would force prosecutors to say whether they intend to seek the death penalty when they bring an indictment. The issue, being argued before the Maryland Court of Appeals today, involves the case of Michael D. Henry, who is to go on trial in January in the stabbing death of a fellow inmate. Prosecutors warn that Anne Arundel County judges effectively rewrote the state's death-penalty legal procedures in a way that could force them to decide early on -- often more than a year before they otherwise might -- whether to seek the death penalty.

Steven Oken was sentenced to death 13 years ago for the rape and murder of Dawn Marie Garvin of White Marsh, and the Maryland Court of Appeals refused Wednesday to delay his execution by lethal injection. If Mr. Oken is put to death, it will be the first execution in Maryland in six years. Mr. Oken is seeking clemency from Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. PEOPLE HAVE asked me whether I am excited about the impending execution of Steven Oken. I tell them no, that I wish I weren't in this situation.