Courtesy of Larry Stafford - Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley comes face-to-face with then-candidate Gregory Hall during his unsuccessful race for the House of Delegates in 2010. O’Malley says that because of Hall’s criminal record, he will not appoint him to an open seat in the General Assembly.
The headline scrawled across the Web site of the Prince George’s County Young Democrats last week was intended to be provocative, taking aim at Gov. Martin O’Malley for his refusal to let a reformed drug dealer fill an open seat in the state legislature.
“Governor O’Malley, do you believe in redemption?”
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The young Democrats were rallying support for Gregory A. Hall. Jailed two decades ago on drug and murder charges (the latter later dropped), Hall seemed poised last month to become a state lawmaker, realizing the potential once seemingly lost in his life. Until O’Malley stepped in.
But the blog post imploring the governor to appoint Hall said as much about O’Malley (D) and how crime and punishment remain complex issues for the Maryland governor.
As the young Democrats framed it, does O’Malley — who has built a national reputation espousing party messages of hope, change and moving forward — believe in redemption? How about, specifically, for a person like Hall, who in his 20s was in a gun battle that left a 13-year-old dead?
The answer, the governor’s record suggests, is not really.
In O’Malley’s six years as governor, 640 of 690 requests for pardons and scores of requests for commutations have died on his desk.
The figures stands in stark contrast to his Republican predecessor, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., who in one term pardoned or commuted the sentences of 249, including several serving life sentences for murder. In fact, O’Malley, is on pace to have the fewest number of pardons of any Maryland governor in decades, and fewer than half the number of Parris N. Glendening, the state’s last Democratic governor.
Critics say O’Malley, who has broad discretion over parole of the state’s worst offenders, has also effectively turned any sentence of life with the possibility of parole in Maryland into life without parole.
The legislature forced him to begin acting this year within 180 days on recommendations for parole of inmates who had served at least 25 years. Previously, he let them languish.
When it comes to issues involving crime, the former state prosecutor remains guided by his own rigid moral compass, even as he has evolved to support progressive social causes.
Where his advocacy for legalizing same-sex marriage positioned him at odds with the teachings of his Catholic Church as too liberal, his hard line on criminals has kept him to the right of its messages of forgiveness. Democrat or Republican, O’Malley can be counted among the most conservative of his contemporaries on crime.
But some wonder if his opposition to Hall is politically motivated.
“People are hearing that it’s about his presidential ambitions. I hope that’s not the case,” Larry Stafford Jr., head of the Prince George’s Young Democrats, said of the governor’s position on Hall.
As mayor of Baltimore, O’Malley’s hard-charging efforts to curb violent crime, including mass arrests, for which the city later settled a suit brought by civil rights groups, helped propel O’Malley to Maryland’s top elective office.
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