On November 6, Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler (pic­tured) filed a brief with an appel­late court, for­mal­ly request­ing that the death sen­tence of Jody Lee Miles be vacat­ed. Gansler argued that Miles’s death sen­tence is no longer valid. Miles was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1998. In 2006, Maryland’s Court of Appeals sus­pend­ed exe­cu­tions because the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures had not been law­ful­ly imple­ment­ed. In 2013, the state repealed the death penal­ty for future offens­es. Upon repeal, Miles filed a motion to have his sen­tence changed to life in prison with­out parole, argu­ing that the repeal should apply to him, too. However, the appel­late court reject­ed the argu­ment, stat­ing that the repeal only applied to future con­vic­tions. Gansler’s motion con­tend­ed that the absence of an exe­cu­tion pro­to­col ren­dered an exe­cu­tion in Maryland a ​“legal and fac­tu­al impos­si­bil­i­ty.” He request­ed that Miles’s death sen­tence be changed to life in prison with­out parole, and he not­ed that a deci­sion on this motion would leave the door ​“wide open” for chal­lenges from the oth­er three defen­dants on Maryland’s death row.

Gansler indi­cat­ed that incom­ing Attorney General Brian Frosh agreed with the state’s position.

(J. Wagner ​“Maryland has no author­i­ty to exe­cute its death-row inmates, attor­ney gen­er­al says,” Washington Post, November 6, 2014). See Death Row and Maryland.

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