Deliberations to resume in Maryland death penalty trial

Posted: 8:18 am Mon, February 6, 2012
By Associated Press

ANNAPOLIS — Jurors are expected to resume deliberations in the death penalty trial of one of two prisoners accused in the stabbing death of a correctional officer.

Deliberations are scheduled to resume Monday in Anne Arundel County in the trial of 32-year-old Lee Edwart Stephens, who is accused in the 2006 death of Cpl. David McGuinn at the House of Correction in Jessup.

If Stephens is sentenced to death, it would be the first since Maryland’s law changed to reserve capital punishment for murders in which there is a videotaped confession or biological evidence linking the defendant to the crime.

Prosecutors told jurors that they have biological evidence — McGuinn’s blood on the prisoners’ clothes. But Stephens’ defense says that that’s no surprise because blood was spread after the attack.