Why would a judge turn a killer loose? In an era when most citizens believe stiff sentences deter crime, Maryland operated a judicial scam in which the sentence handed down when the public is paying attention could be dramatically altered later.
For more than 50 years until 2006, Maryland judges could reduce criminal sentences upon motion by the convict at any time for any reason—or for no reason at all. There is no law that permits judges to do this. Their authority derives from a procedural rule developed by judges without public debate.
Maryland Rule of Criminal Procedure 4-345, granting judges the power to reconsider sentences in a resentencing hearing, became a routine part of Maryland’s criminal justice system. Defense attorneys asked Circuit Court judges to reconsider many of the tens of thousands of sentences they handed down each year, even sentences reached through plea bargain agreements.
Every year, hundreds of criminal sentences were reduced, and dozens of felons released from prison on orders of a Maryland judge. In many cases the reconsideration hearing was held years after the original trial, often without the victim’s knowledge. Critics said some judges cynically imposed harsh sentences to pacify crime victims clamoring for long prison terms, intending all along to reduce the punishment later.
“It’s kind of the dirty little secret of the criminal justice system,” said Robert L. Dean, a former Montgomery County state’s attorney who also served as lead felony prosecutor in Prince George’s County, at the time.
For many years, the chief obstacle to closing down this “dirty little secret” was Delegate Joe Vallario, a leading PG County criminal and DUI defense attorney and Head Weasel on the House Judiciary Committee.
In 2000, Lt. Gov. (and then-Delegate) Anthony G. Brown introduced a bill that would have limited judicial reconsideration to one year after sentencing, except in extraordinary circumstances. Brown drafted the bill after reading about the early release from prison of Kenneth J. Lodowski, who was originally sentenced to die for the 1983 robbery-murder of an off-duty Prince George’s police officer, Carlton X. Fletcher, and a Greenbelt mini-mart clerk. Lodowski was released in January 2000 after serving 16 years for the two slayings.
But Vallario, Maryland judges and the state bar association all opposed Brown’s bill. In mid-March, Vallario’s committee killed it on an 11 to 9 vote.
It was not until continuing citizen pressure, lead by public interest groups like the Maryland Crime Victims Resource Center, forced the Maryland Assembly to change the rule by statute, effective 2006, were Maryland courts required to provide notice to victims of “subsequent” sentencing proceedings, to act only in open court modify a sentence, and to allow each victim or victim’s representative an opportunity to be heard.
Even today, reports emerge of victims shocked to run into the person who robbed, raped beat or hurt them walking free a few years later on the streets of their town. This is because in an uber-liberal state like Maryland, many members of the bar and government officials retain a self-interested suspicion about the entire concept of victims rights.
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