Md. Senate gives initial OK to life-without-parole sentencing bill

ANNAPOLIS – The Senate on Thursday gave preliminary approval to legislation that would make clear that legislators, in repealing capital punishment in 2013, intended for judges – not juries – to decide whether convicted first-degree murderers deserve the state’s new ultimate punishment, life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The law, as written, currently provides for juries to mete out no-parole life sentences. But supporters of the pending legislation say that provision was merely an oversight when lawmakers abolished the death penalty.

Maryland’s capital punishment law had provided that only juries could hand down the sentence. In repealing the death penalty — and replacing it with life without parole — the General Assembly had failed to delete the jury-sentencing provision, said Sen. Robert G. Cassilly, R-Harford and the bill’s chief sponsor.

“It was simply overlooked,” Cassilly said before the Senate’s preliminary voice vote.

But Sen. Joanne C. Benson, D-Prince George’s, voiced concern that the measure would undermine efforts to make criminal sentences more fair.

“We’re trying to correct this criminal-justice system,” she said.

The Senate could vote as early as Friday to pass the bill, which would send it to the House of Delegates.

The Senate’s consideration of the bill comes as Maryland’s top court weighs whether a convicted killer’s no-parole life sentence must be vacated because the punishment was ordered by a judge rather than a jury – as stated in the law that abolished the death penalty.

The Maryland attorney general’s office has urged the Court of Appeals to hold that Darrell Bellard’s judge-issued sentence is valid because the legislature intended that judges decide whether life without parole is in order. The public defender’s office has countered that the law must be interpreted as written and that juries get to determine the punishment.

In its argument, the public defender’s office said bills — like Cassilly’s — to “correct” the law died in the General Assembly in 2015 and 2016, belying the claim that the legislature merely committed a drafting error in repealing the death penalty.

Cassilly’s bill, as written, makes no mention of error and apparently concedes the law currently provides for juries to determine no-parole life sentences.

The measure, Senate Bill 1187, states that its purpose is “repealing certain provisions of law that provide a separate jury proceeding to determine whether a person convicted of murder in the first degree is sentenced to imprisonment for life without the possibility of parole or imprisonment for life” with the possibility of parole. The bill would go into effect Oct. 1.

Cassilly said the apparent concession in his bill should have no effect on the high court’s consideration of what the General Assembly intended in repealing the death penalty four years ago.

“Their decision will be based on what the law was,” Cassilly said. “The die is cast.”

The Court of Appeals, which heard arguments March 6, is expected to render its decision by Aug. 31 in the case, Darrell Bellard v. State of Maryland, No. 72, September Term 2016.

Bellard was convicted by a Prince George’s County Circuit Court jury in April 2014 for the August 2010 shooting deaths of two women, a boy and a girl in Lanham. Prosecutors contended that Bellard, a drug dealer, went on the murderous rampage because he believed the children’s mother had stolen his marijuana.

The circuit court judge, not the jury, sentenced Bellard to four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.

The intermediate Court of Special Appeals upheld the judge-given sentence in a reported 3-0 opinion last August.

The appellate court said the legislature, in repealing capital punishment, never intended to remove from judges the sentencing authority in non-death-penalty cases.

Bellard then sought review by the Court of Appeals.