Despite Unequal Adminstration of Death Penalty--MD Judge Denies Request To Postpone Evans Execution
- Evans is Black. His two victims, both of whom were white, were killed in Baltimore County.
It's a legal setback for defense attorneys trying to block next month's scheduled execution of convicted killer Vernon Evans. Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge John Turnbull refused a request yesterday to postpone the execution. Evans attorney, Julie Dietrich, says lawyers will quickly appeal the denial to the Maryland Court of Appeals. The defense wants the execution postponed while they use the findings of a University of Maryland death penalty study to appeal the death sentence. Pointing out that other Maryland death-row inmates are in various stages of appealing their sentences based on the University of Maryland death penalty study, Dietrich said, "It would be fundamentally arbitrary to allow Mr. Evans to be executed while four other death-row inmates are litigating the exact same issue." Evans is schedule to die by lethal injection during the five-day period that begins April 18th. He was one of two men convicted in the April 1983 killings two people at the Warren House Motor Hotel in Pikesville. The university study two years ago documented racial and geographic disparities in the application of the death penalty in Maryland. [more] and [more]