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
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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