Paid for by Citizens for Colburn Committee. Authority John W. Phillips, Jr., Treasurer

Colburn files bill to define life sentences
By SARAH ENSOR PEARCE
Staff Writer - Star Democrat
December 19, 2005

EASTON — How long is a life sentence?

Inspired by a letter to the editor of The Star Democrat, state Sen. Richard Colburn, R-37-Mid-Shore, has filed a bill to define a life sentence for a first-degree murder conviction as a minimum of 25 years imprisonment before parole eligibility.

According to Maryland law, someone serving a life-imprisonment-with-parole sentence is eligible for parole after 15 years in prison, with credits given for certain behavior. If the person was given a life imprisonment sentence after the state sought a harsher penalty for a first-degree murder conviction, he is eligible for parole after 25 years, with credits.

In August, J. Owen Wise, retired Caroline County Circuit Court judge, responded to an article about Joshua Cahall, who was sentenced to life in prison for the first-degree murder of Stephen Wade Ott Jr., a ninth-grade student at Queen Anne’s County High School.

“The headline of a recent new(s) article ... said ‘Queen Anne’s man to spend rest of life in prison,’” wrote Wise. “While there is a basis for that assertion, the reality is quite different.”

He said he is amazed since he wrote the letter by the number of people who told him they had no idea a life sentence was not literal.

Wise recalled the Aug. 3, 1972, murders of Patricia Lee Dean, 18, and her sister, Cynthia Marie Dean, 14, who were fatally shot at their parents’ laundromat in Tuckahoe Shopping Center near Hillsboro. Although Wise wrote that both men convicted of the murder were out of jail, only one has been released. Wise was state’s attorney for Caroline County in 1972 and prosecuted Scott Fleming Caldwell and Michael L. Thomas for the murders of Patsy and Cindy Dean.

Caldwell and Thomas each were tried and convicted of armed robbery, carrying a concealed deadly weapon and two counts of first-degree murder. They each were sentenced to serve two life sentences plus 11 years. Thomas was to serve his life sentences concurrently. Caldwell, who pulled the trigger, was to serve his sentences consecutively.

On Gov. William Donald Schaefer’s last day in office, he commuted Caldwell’s sentence to 45 years. That immediately made Caldwell eligible for parole, although he was not paroled. He was released in April 2003. Thomas is still held at the Western Correctional Institution in Cumberland. There is no set date for his release.

The point Wise made was that people sentenced to life often are released after serving a few years.

“We are only fooling ourselves if we think a life sentence is what it says; it is more like 10 to 15 years, or less, if parole is granted. Judges cannot change this, but the Legislature can, and should,” Wise wrote in the letter.

Upon reading the letter, Colburn immediately drafted a bill. He said he tried to find a legal way to make sure those sentenced to life serve life. He rarely files bills early, but said he filed several this year. The bill will be Senate Bill 37, assigned to the Senate judicial proceedings committee.

He said he remembers exactly where he was when he heard the Dean sisters were murdered. He was working at the Easton A&P a few months after he was released from the U.S. Army. Word spread around the grocery store, he said, and it left people breathless. He said people on the Eastern Shore are not used to murder.

Wise said he offered to testify at Senate hearings. He said sometimes the penalty for first-degree murder is less than that for second-degree murder. The Dean case is background, he said. He is not asking the state legislature to correct a 30-year-old mistake. In 1972, the death penalty had been repealed by the United States Supreme Court, and life-without-parole was not yet a sentence. A life sentence was the harshest penalty available.

The bill is not a crusade, said Wise, but an effort to put truth in sentencing.

Talbot County Councilman and former Talbot County Sheriff Thomas G. Duncan at the Dec. 6 council meeting proposed the council send a letter in support of the bill. Duncan used as an example Caldwell and Thomas, whom he said were released before they served 25 years. Duncan, Council President Hilary B. Spence and Councilman Peter A. Carroll voted to send the letter. Councilman Hope R. Harrington voted against sending a letter. Councilman Philip C. Foster abstained from a vote that day, he said, because the council had done no research on the bill.

He said the council historically does not take a stand on state legislative issues unless they affect county government. If the council were to make an exception, he said, council members should make sure they know as much about the bill as the people who will vote on it.

As a former prosecutor, Foster said he dealt with frustrating situations in which people served little of a life sentence. Although the example Duncan gave might seem like good support for the bill, Foster said other cases might be good examples of why the bill is bad — or the state legislature might consider an even better bill the council has not seen. Foster said he may have concluded the bill is a good idea after careful consideration, but he did not have the opportunity.

Duncan, who was a detective for the Caroline County Sheriff’s Office when the Dean sisters were murdered, said people who make mistakes in life must pay their dues, and 10 years in jail is not a life sentence. He said truth in sentencing is an oxymoron.

A person accused of a crime should have a fair trial and access to all the defense resources offered by the state, said Duncan, but when a guilty verdict is returned, the person should be given an accurate sentence.