Death Row Timeline

Bloodsworth was convicted for the 1984 rape and murder of 9-year-old Dawn Hamilton. He was arrested after someone identified him as looking like a police composite sketch made from the recollections of five witnesses.

He was convicted in 1985 and spent two years on death row. The Maryland Court of Appeals overturned the original sentence because police failed to tell Bloodsworth's attorneys that there were other suspects in the case. He was convicted again in 1987 and sentenced to life in prison.

Exoneration

In 1993, a newly developed procedure called PCR DNA amplification found that a tiny spot of semen discovered on the victim's underwear did not match Bloodsworth's genetic markers. The test was not available during either the 1985 or 1987 trial.

Gov. William Donald Schaefer pardoned Bloodsworth in December 1993, and in June 1994, the state gave him $300,000. He was the first inmate in the United States who had been on death row to be cleared by DNA evidence.

Bloodsworth has gone on to testify in front of state legislatures in favor of legislation to abolish the death penalty. Federal legislation to broaden access to DNA testing was named in his honor.

In 2003, a DNA database search matched the evidence to Kimberley Shay Ruffner, who had been in prison for nearly two decades on a 45-year sentence for burglary, attempted rape and assault with intent to murder.

Thanos had served four of seven years on a robbery conviction in 1990 when he mistakenly was released early. He killed three teenagers -- Melody Pistorio, 14, Billy Winebrenner, 16, and Gregory Taylor Jr., 18 - during a four-day crime spree.

He was convicted of all three murders. After a nine-hour deliberation, a St. Mary's County judge gave Thanos a death sentence for killing Taylor. Earlier in the proceedings he had told the judge he wanted a life sentence without the possibility of parole but "with the possibility of escape."

Execution

Thanos's family and public defenders launched a series of appeals, arguing ineffective council because attorneys failed to fully investigate Thanos's mental state. Thanos opposed many of the appeals.

On May 17, 1994, Thanos became the first person executed in Maryland since the death penalty was reinstated 18 years earlier.

Hunt killed Baltimore police officer Vincent J. Adolfo in 1985 as the officer tried to arrest him for stealing a car.

Hunt's original 1986 death sentence was overturned because of a 1987 Supreme Court ruling that limited the use of victim impact statements in murder trials. A second jury again gave him a death sentence. In 1996, the Court of Appeals granted a temporary stay to Hunt's execution after attorneys argued that two members of the jury withheld information that would have barred them, and that a witness for the prosecution was promised leniency in a possible future criminal case in exchange for testimony against Hunt. Later, however, the Court found that Hunt had waived the right to appeal on those grounds because he had not brought the information to light when it was available to the defense team.

During one 60-day period in 1994, prisoners on death row were given the option to choose if they would like to die by lethal injection or in the gas chamber. Hunt was the only one to choose the gas chamber, saying in interviews that he would like to die an ugly death that would look more like "murder."

Hunt's late request to switch to death by lethal injection was first rejected by a Circuit Court judge before being approved by the Maryland Court of Appeals. He was executed July 2, 1997.

Gilliam and two accomplices carjacked and killed 21-year-old Christine Doerfler in Baltimore. During his arrest, Gilliam led police on a high-speed chase and was seriously injured.

Trial testimony from the two accomplices implicated Gilliam as the triggerman. He was sentenced to death Oct. 31, 1989. The accomplices vacillated on their accusation a few years later, but prosecutors eventually got statements from them supporting the original claim. Gilliam maintained that although drugs clouded his memory and he could not be sure who did pull the trigger, he was certain it wasn't him

In his last days, Gilliam gave several phone interviews from death row, urging listeners to "spread the message of how wicked the death penalty is."

He was executed November 16, 1998.

Oken went on a killing spree in 1987, sexually assaulting and killing two women in Maryland -- 20-year-old newlywed Dawn Marie Garvin and her sister-in-law Patricia Hirt -- and one in Maine, Lori Ward.

Attorneys presented mitigating evidence that Oken had a drug problem and suffered from a mental disorder; he was sentenced to die in January 1991.

Death warrants for Oken were signed in 2002 and 2003, but each was stayed because of pending court rulings; eventually, neither was found to apply to Oken's case.

In 2003, the state Court of Appeals refused to hear Oken's application to overturn his sentence based on the results of a Maryland study that found racial disparity in death sentences.

A federal judge issued an indefinite stay of execution in 2004 after finding that the prosecution delayed providing information about lethal injection protocols to the defense, but the Supreme Court intervened shortly thereafter and allowed the execution to proceed on June 17, 2004.

Baker shot Baltimore County grandmother Jane Tyson, 49, in the parking lot of a shopping center as she was putting her two grandchildren in the car in 1991. He stole her purse and fled.

At the trial, an accomplice who drove the getaway car testified that Baker was the shooter. The accomplice was given a life sentence in a separate trial. Baker was sentenced to death.

In their bid for clemency, Baker's attorneys noted his troubled past, including being born to a 14-year-old mother, suffering abuse at the hands of his stepfather and using drugs and alcohol by the age of 10.

In May 2002, Baker had been transported from his cell to an isolation area to await his execution when then-Gov. Parris N. Glenending issued a moratorium on all executions in the state, pending review of a University of Maryland death penalty study that found that defendants who were black and who killed white victims in Baltimore County were more likely to get the death penalty. Baker's case fit all of those characteristics.

After new governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. reinstated the death penalty, the state Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court refused to intervene. Baker was executed Dec. 5, 2005.

Evans killed Scott Piechowicz, 27, and Susan Kennedy, 19, Piechowicz's sister-in-law, in a Pikesville hotel in 1983. Piechowicz and Kennedy had been scheduled to testify in against Anthony Grandison, the defendant in a federal drug trial, who paid Evans $9,000 to kill the witnesses.

A Worcester County Circuit Court jury took just 70 minutes to convict Evans of murder in 1984. Since his conviction, his attorneys have launched a series of appeals arguing racial bias in the application of the death penalty in Maryland. They also say that years of intravenous drug use have badly damaged Evans's veins, so lethal injection would cause him horrific pain.

Evans was scheduled to be executed in 2005. The execution was stayed to give him time to finish appeals based on a University of Maryland study that showed racial bias in the administration of the death penalty in the state. The appeal was eventually rejected.

He again was scheduled for execution in February 2006 but the process again was stayed, this time hours before he was to be put to death.

Grandison had been charged with possession of heroin and cocaine with intent to distribute and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon when Scott Piechowicz, 27, and Susan Kennedy, 19, both of whom were scheduled to testify against him, were killed.

Grandison was convicted of the drug charges, but prosecutors said nearly a dozen of their 35 witnesses were threatened during the trial. Grandison and three co-defendants, including Vernon Evans Jr. -- the triggerman and also a current death-row inmate -- were convicted of federal witness tampering.

Grandison's murder trial was moved from Baltimore County to Somerset County. He was convicted by a jury there and given a death sentence.

Grandison and Evans appealed, saying they had been subject to double jeopardy for facing federal witness tampering charges in addition to the state murder charges. Those appeals were denied.

Grandison's appeal on the grounds that the death penalty is unconstitutional was denied in 1984 by the Maryland Court of Appeals. In 1992, he won resentencing on grounds that sentencing forms and jury instructions were partially unconstitutional, but again was sentenced to death.

Booth-el and an accomplice robbed the home of his elderly neighbors in 1983. Booth-el knew Irvin and Rose Bronstein could identify him, so he bound, gagged and stabbed the couple.

In 1984, Booth-el was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The Supreme Court overturned that sentence in 1987, ruling that victim impact statements unnecessarily inflamed the jury in death penalty trials.

In 1988, Booth-el was sentenced to death a second time, but it was overturned by the Maryland Court of Appeals because the judge refused to allow defense attorneys to tell the jury that Booth-el soon would be eligible for parole.

In 1990, Booth-el was sentenced to death a third time. This sentence was overturned in 2001 because the judge ordered the jury to not take into account the fact that Booth-el was drunk at the time the crime was committed -- a defense which was legal when the crime was committed but had been outlawed by the time of his trial.

Current Status

In 2003, the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond overturned the ruling vacating the third death sentence.

Burch broke into the Capitol Heights home of Robert and Cleo Davis in March 1995. The husband found Burch in the living room and confronted him with a gun, but did not shoot because he recognized Burch as a neighbor. Burch stabbed Robert more than 30 times with a pair of scissors before attacking Cleo as she attempted to call police.

Burch's public defenders conceded he had killed the couple but asked for life in prison, noting that Burch had a troubled childhood and was high on crack cocaine at the time of the crime. He was convicted on both murders and given two death sentences.

In 1997, an appeals court ruled that Burch should not have received two death sentences because the jury did not analyze the circumstances of the two murders separately. One death sentence was thrown out but the other stood. By 2001, he had exhausted all of his appeals.

Miles killed Edward Joseph Atkinson in April 1997. Miles claimed he had been sent by a loan shark to pick up a package from Atkinson. Atkinson was standing with his back to Miles and when Atkinson reached in his jacket, Miles thought he was going to produce a gun and fired at him. Miles stole Atkinson's wallet and briefcase and used the victim's credit cards at several stores and gas stations.

A neighbor picked up a cell phone call between Miles and his wife Jona by using a radio scanner. He then turned over this call to the police, who subsequently identified Miles's wife's voice. Jona Miles led police to some of the items Jody Miles had purchased with the victim's credit cards, as well as the gun used in the murder.

The defense challenged this evidence as a violation of the Maryland Wiretapping Statute, which protects cell phone calls. The phone call as well as evidence obtained in the initial search of the Miles's home were suppressed, but evidence to which Jona Miles had led the police was ruled admissible. Miles was convicted in and given a death sentence.

In May 2008, Miles's attorneys appealed for a fourth time to the Maryland Court of Appeals. They want the level of proof for a jury determining that aggravating factors outweigh mitigating factors to be raised to beyond a reasonable doubt.