Death-penalty appeal claims discrimination; Lawyers to argue Md.'s death penalty was imposed unfairly on black men who killed white victims
- Originally published in The Baltimore Sun March 1, 2005
Copyright 2005 The Baltimore Sun Company
By Jennifer McMenamin, SUN STAFF
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
the Evans appeal, however, lawyers for the 55-year-old man convicted in
1984 of the contract murder of a federal witness and a bystander seem
to go a step further, using data that specifically assess Baltimore
County prosecutors' record of seeking or not seeking the death penalty
in death-eligible cases.
In a footnote to
their appeal, Evans' lawyers wrote, "While the Baltimore County State's
Attorney's Office has suggested that it seeks the death penalty in
every death-eligible crime, Paternoster's research shows that the
office filed a notice of intent to seek the death penalty in only 99 of
152 death-eligible cases."
Baltimore
County State's Attorney Sandra O'Connor has said that her prosecutors
seek the death penalty in every death-eligible case that meets the
state's legal requirements, that does not rely solely on the testimony
of a co-defendant and in which the victim's family understands and is
willing to endure the lengthy process.
But
Jeffrey B. O'Toole, one of Evans' lawyers, argues that that is not the
case. "It is clear that discretion is being exercised," he said
yesterday. "It is our position that that discretion is being exercised
in a racially discriminatory fashion."
Evans is black; his two victims were white.
John
Cox, an assistant Baltimore County state's attorney and one of the
prosecutors handling the Evans case, said he had not seen Evans' latest
court filings but disputed the assessment.
"I've
been in this office almost 19 years now, and I can absolutely tell you
that race has never played a factor in our decision in seeking the
death penalty," he said. "They can throw all the numbers they want at
you, in effect, to play games, but it's absolutely not a factor."
Cox
said he did not know how researchers determined which cases were
death-eligible - meaning the cases met Maryland's legal requirements
that a first-degree murder defendant be proven to have been the wielder
of the murder weapon and that there be an "aggravating circumstance,"
such as a murder committed as part of a kidnapping, rape, arson or
robbery.
Cox said that researchers working
with Paternoster sent Baltimore County prosecutors lists of cases that
they had preliminarily identified as death-eligible that included some
that were not.
"I can't say for sure
whether those mistakes were corrected," he said, "and I can't say for
sure where they're getting the numbers that they're citing right now."
Attempts to reach Paternoster at his College Park office for comment were unsuccessful.
Evans
and drug kingpin Anthony Grandison were convicted and sentenced to
death in the April 1983 killing of David Scott Piechowicz and Susan
Kennedy at the Warren House Motor Hotel in Pikesville. Grandison paid
Evans $9,000 to kill Piechowicz and his wife, Cheryl, who were to
testify against Grandison in a federal drug trial. Kennedy was working
for her sister Cheryl that day, and prosecutors said at the trial that
they believed Evans mistook Kennedy for her sister on the day of the
killings.
Grandison remains on death row.
On
Thursday, Baltimore County Circuit Judge Christian M. Kahl signed a
death warrant for Evans, ordering that he to be put to death by lethal
injection during a five-day period that begins April 18.
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