The legislation, championed by Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), did not apply to people sentenced to death before its passage. That has left the legal standing of the four men in limbo.
Gansler (D) said he has concluded that it is a “legal and factual impossibility” to execute the prisoners because Maryland no longer has regulations in place on how to administer lethal injections. With the death penalty no longer on the books, the state cannot develop new regulations on carrying out executions, Gansler said. Keeping the men on death row, he argued, therefore violates their due-process rights.
The state’s position is included in a brief filed Thursday in response to an appeal by death-row inmate Jody Lee Miles, who is seeking a new sentence. The state is asking an appellate court to resentence Miles — who was convicted in the 1997 robbery and murder of a musical-theater director in Wicomico County — to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“Mr. Miles should no longer be a death-row inmate,” Gansler said at a news conference in his Baltimore office.
