"Some Md. prisoners freed after 2012 court ruling" by Jessica Gresko | Associated Press, November 28, 2013
BALTIMORE — Together, the four men sitting handcuffed in a Baltimore courtroom had spent 151 years in prison.
Nicholas Marshall-Bey: 34 years on a murder conviction. Salim Sadiki: 37 years after being found guilty of rape. Michael Person: 39 years in the slaying of a bartender. Hercules Williams: 41 years in the death of a man in his living room.
Yet after a short hearing earlier this month, the men did something that once would have seemed impossible. They walked out of the courthouse as free men and stood on a city street, hugging family and wiping away tears.
The men were released after Maryland’s highest court decided judges had given improper instructions to juries that heard the men’s cases decades ago, making them fundamentally flawed. The same faulty instructions have now freed approximately 50 people statewide, and some 200 prisoners could ultimately be released from Maryland prisons....
The state’s highest court ruled last year that before 1980, judges around the state gave juries instructions that failed to clearly explain in part that prosecutors have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and that defendants are innocent until proven guilty. As a result of the court’s so-called Unger decision, anyone who was tried by a jury before 1980 could get a new trial.
But given the length of time that’s passed, that’s tough. Witnesses have moved or died. Evidence has been destroyed. As a result, some counties have agreed to forgo new trials and grant some prisoners freedom in exchange for the commitment to be on probation....
What is missing here is whether they are truly guilty of the crimes, although I suppose it doesn't matter.
Prisoners who have been let go said they appreciate the second chance and that they’ve changed since being imprisoned decades ago.
Who wouldn't?
Kareem Hasan, who went to prison at 17 in the fatal shooting of a man during a robbery, was one of the first prisoners to be released in May. Hasan, 55, has since gotten a job working at a wastewater treatment plant and is saving money to buy a car. He says he and others want a ‘‘chance to show we’re not animals’’ and ‘‘prove our worth.’’
Karriem Saleem El-Amin, who was 18 when he went to prison for his role in a grocery store robbery in which two people died, including one of his accomplices, was released in July and now works at a bakery. El-Amin, 60, said he hopes the victims of his crime and others can forgive. ‘‘I want them to know that I’m not that guy that I was,’’ he said during an interview at the University of Maryland’s law school, which has been helping many of the people affected by the decision with their transition back to society.
Not everyone supports the prisoners’ release, however, including some victims’ families....
Yeah, I was kind of wondering about them and why they are such an afterthought here.
Many of the prisoners being released once had hopes of getting out sooner. When they were given life sentences, the practice was to grant parole after about 20 years, said University of Maryland law professor Michael Millemann, who has been representing some of the defendants. But in 1993 a life-sentenced prisoner on work release killed his estranged girlfriend and then himself, and Maryland Governor Parris Glendening later announced that anyone with a life sentence would die in prison....
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Also see: Maryland's Musical Electric Chairs
You want to be the one left standing.
