Stop the execution of Vernon Evans
By Mike Stark

Vernon Evans’ latest request for a stay of
execution has been denied. This decision by a
Baltimore County circuit judge was no surprise and
will clear the way for a higher court and in this case
slightly more enlightened one to render an opinion on
Vernon’s request. Having been an anti-death penalty
activist for more than a decade, I’ve learned not to
confuse principal - or even basic morality - with the
bizarre mechanisms of the courts.
The only time “morality” ever makes its entrance
is through the self-righteous sputtering of a judge
unleashing bombastic condemnation upon some poor
(usually black) miscreant – but that’s more theater
than justice. After ten years I have significantly
lowered my expectations. Still, as anticipated as the
decision was, it is still a slap in the fact and I am
angry.
What the judge decreed, in essence, was that
Vernon’s claim that he is a victim of the proven
racism that riddles Maryland’s death penalty process
was without merit. Never mind that in 2003 a
Governor-commissioned, $250,000 study of Maryland’s
death penalty found that “blacks who kill whites are 2
½ times more likely to be sentenced to death than
whites who kill whites, 3 ½ times more likely than
blacks who kill blacks, and almost 11 times more
likely to be sentenced to death than ‘other’ racial
combinations.” Vernon is a black man accused of
killing two white victims in Baltimore County. He
never had a chance.
Even a cursory glance at Maryland’s death row
shows the legitimacy of Vernon’s claims. In Vernon’s
trial, prosecutors used 8 out of 10 of their
preemptory strikes before trial to remove potential
black jurors. Furthermore, a study performed by Howard
University criminologist Richard Selzer showed that
during this period, County prosecutors were striking
black jurors at twice the expected rate. Across
Maryland, every year blacks account for approximately
80% of murder victims, yet 7 out 8 of those on death
row are accused of killing whites. And even though
black-on-white murder accounts for less than 5% of
killings in Maryland, yet such cases make up over 62%
(5 out of 8) of Maryland’s current death row
population.
In the US Supreme Court’s infamous 1987 McCleskey
decision (just about the same time they were okaying
the execution of 16 year olds) the Court decided that
statistics showing how race affects the death penalty
were of no consequence. In a decision that belongs up
there with Plessy v. Ferguson, the court decided that
unless a defendant could show specific racist intent
in their own trial, racist trends were of no
consequence. Of course, prosecutors have long ago
learned to avoid certain words and phrases. Terms
like “animal” drive the point home just as well as
“nigger” these days.
But as if to taunt my jaded abolitionist mind
even further, over the past two weeks county
prosecutors have been up to their old tricks. Just
two days ago, Baltimore County prosecutors announced
that they will seek the death penalty against John
Edward Kennedy, an 18 year-old boy accused of killing
the dean of a private school during a botched robbery
attempt. The boy is 18 years old, but as a reporter
at a local newspaper observed to me, “he looks more
like 16.” I guess this is the prosecutors’ sick
answer to the recent US Supreme Court’s Roper v.
Simmons decision outlawing the execution of juvenile
offenders. And, you guessed it, the boy is black… the
victim white.
Maryland has a record on this type of thing.
Local amateur historians are fond of interrupting
anyone who refers to Maryland as a northern state.
Far from it, Maryland’s history and culture is full of
the stench of the old plantocracy and racial
codifications that came with it. Lynchings, racial
terror, segregation, and continued discrimination are
as part of the “Free State” as crab cakes. In fact,
since the state started tracking numbers in 1923,
blacks have accounted for 77% of all executions and
88% of those executed under 25 years of age. The last
teenager executed in Maryland was Leonard Shockley.
Shockley, a poor black 16 year-old from Pennsylvania,
was convicted of killing a white woman in Dorchester
County, Maryland. Shockely remains to this day the
youngest person executed in the United States since
1959.
From the tragic to the absurd, a week prior to
the indictment of the 18-year-old Kennedy, Baltimore
County prosecutors showed their sense of humor.
During a marathon prison bus ride, there was a murder.
The prisoners were being transported from a
maximum-security prison in Hagerstown to Baltimore for
their court hearings. One prisoner, Kevin G. Johns
Jr., was a deeply disturbed, possibly schizophrenic,
individual convicted of strangling his uncle and had
also recently been convicted of killing a 16 year-old
cellmate. During his last court hearing, the Johns
begged the judge for help, claiming that he was sure
that he would kill again without treatment. The man
Johns is accused of killing, Phillip Parker Jr., was
being transported in order to testify on Johns’
behalf. As a result of the killing, 5 corrections
officers were severely punished: three fired, two
disciplined. It’s a full-blown scandal in the
Department of Corrections. But now, enter Baltimore
County. Somehow, county prosecutors have ascertained
that during the hours long bus ride, the killing
occurred in their jurisdiction. And someone’s gotta
die. That’s justice, Baltimore County style. By the
way, Johns is a black man.
And so it goes. I know that in order to get
relief on his concerns, Vernon will have to clear the
hurdle of McClesky. In a similar way, I know even
though the only eyewitness to the murder stated Vernon
was not the killer, this is little help in avoiding an
execution on April 18th. Still, I sit here angry. I
hope you are too.

Join Maryland activists for a march to Maryland’s
death row in Baltimore on Saturday, April 9th at 2 PM.
Gather at Cane Field (Monument and Ensor). Email
cedp_dc-AT-hotmail.com for more information.

Also, contact Governor Ehrlich and demand a halt to
the execution of Vernon Evans:
ROBERT L. EHRLICH, JR., Governor
State House
100 State Circle
Annapolis, MD 21401 - 1925
(410) 974-3901
1-800-811-8336 (toll free, Maryland)
e-mail: Governor-AT-gov.state.md.us
fax: (410) 974-3275
tdd: (410) 333-3098
web: www.gov.state.md.us

Michael Stark is a regular contributor to the
New Abolitionist, the newsletter of the Campaign
to End the Death Penalty. See:
www.nodeathpenalty.org