On December 31, 2014, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley announced he will com­mute the sen­tences of the four men remain­ing on the state’s death row to life with­out parole. O’Malley signed Maryland’s death penal­ty repeal bill into law in 2013, but the repeal was not retroac­tive. In a state­ment, O’Malley said, ​“Recent appeals and the lat­est opin­ion on this mat­ter by Maryland’s Attorney General have called into ques­tion the legal­i­ty of car­ry­ing out ear­li­er death sen­tences — sen­tences imposed pri­or to abo­li­tion. In fact, the Attorney General has opined that the car­ry­ing out of pri­or sen­tences is now ille­gal in the absence of an exist­ing statute.” Prior to announc­ing the com­mu­ta­tions, O’Malley met with fam­i­ly mem­bers of the mur­der vic­tims in the cas­es relat­ed to the four death row inmates. He called the ​“un-end­ing legal process” of the death penal­ty an ​“addi­tion­al tor­ment” on the fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims. He said, ​“Gubernatorial inac­tion — at this point in the legal process — would, in my judg­ment, need­less­ly and cal­lous­ly sub­ject sur­vivors, and the peo­ple of Maryland, to the ordeal of an end­less appeals process, with unpre­dictable twists and turns, and with­out any hope of final­i­ty or closure.”

The com­mu­ta­tions will take place before O’Malley leaves office in mid-January. In recent years, Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois and Gov. John Corzine of New Jersey also com­mut­ed all death sen­tences in their states in con­junc­tion with the pas­sage of a death penal­ty repeal bill. Inmates remain on death row in New Mexico and Connecticut despite the states’ abo­li­tion of the death penalty.

(J. Wagner, ​“Gov. O’Malley to com­mute sen­tences of Maryland’s remain­ing death-row inmates,” Washington Post; Press Release, ​“Governor O’Malley Issues Statement on the Four Remaining Inmates Sentenced to Death in Maryland,” Office of the Governor, December 31, 2014). See Clemency and Recent Legislation.

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