H. Mark Stichel

Of-Counsel
RKW, LLC

H. Mark Stichel’s claim to fame is getting Maryland to abandon lethal gas as a method of execution while getting the courts to vacate a death sentence for his client, Donald Thomas.

“Ultimately I was able to obtain habeas corpus relief on behalf of Mr. Thomas. His death sentence was vacated, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment on remand,” Stichel wrote. “This is one of the few cases in which the Fourth Circuit has affirmed a grant of habeas relief on behalf of a death row inmate.”

Stichel, who is of-counsel for RKW, LLC, in Owings Mills, Maryland, focuses his work on constitutional law, and general business law, including agency, antitrust, consumer protection, corporations and employment law.

He has taught law as an adjunct professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law for nearly 30 years. He is currently coaching a University of Baltimore Law team in the ABA Appellate Advocacy Competition.

When the Duke University graduate served as president of the Baltimore Bar Library—under serious deficits—Stichel was able to increase funding through legislatively-mandated appearance fees that continue to keep the library solvent.

For more than 30 years, Stichel was chairman of the Baltimore City Sitting Judges Committee, through which every sitting judge in Baltimore has retained his or her seat.

For the past 15 years, Stichel said he is the most active member of the American Law Institute from Maryland. In 2019, he was appointed as the group’s Adviser to the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Remedies.

For about 10 years, Stichel has served as a mentor to University of Michigan Law School students working for the summer in Washington, D.C.

Stichel, an avid long-distance cyclist, used his legal skills to prevent the removal of a bike lane in Baltimore’s Canton neighborhood—the same neighborhood where Stichel’s great-grandparents settled in the 19th century, and where he was raised.