MD. Appeals Court Refuses Challenge To Death Penalty

The state's highest court has handed a setback to condemned killer Wesley Baker. The Court of Appeals has refused to hear the first of two appeals by Baker alleging that racial and geographic bias were factors in his death sentence. Baker's appeals are based in part on the findings of University of Maryland professor Raymond Paternoster. The study found that black defendants whose victims were white were 2.5 times more likely to be sentenced to death in Maryland than white defendants with white victims. Baker is black and was convicted of killing Jane Tyson, a white grandmother, outside a Catonsville shopping mall in 1992. Baker's lawyers say another appeal based on the issue is pending. [more]