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David R. Brinkley, Maryland State Delegate.

TheWashington Post - May 21, 2001

When Life Means Life Without Parole, Md. Confronts Costs, Questions

Maureen O'Hagan, Washington Post Staff Writer
May 21, 2001; Page A1

Fifteen-year-old Daniel Carter mapped his future on Aug. 28, 1998, in the middle of the night, underneath a lamppost on East Baltimore's Montford Avenue.

"Yo, that's him," Carter called out to his friends, pointing to 16-year-old Jason Jackson, whose face he could just make out under the light's hazy glow.

The murder was quick and bold. Carter reached behind his back, pulled out a gun and fired, according to Jackson's aunt, a witness. Jackson hit the ground with a bullet in his head.

Then, according to court documents, Carter ran away smiling.

Carter's path, plotted that night on a sweaty city street, led him to a prison cell where he is now serving a new kind of death sentence. It's called life in prison.

"They say life means life," Carter, now 18, said recently from behind the visiting room glass.

Although Maryland law allows for parole -- and Carter's sentence, like that of most lifers, specifically carries that possibility -- it has become increasingly likely that lifers in the state will die behind bars. That's mainly because of a 1995 decision by Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) to sign parole papers for lifers only when they are terminally ill. Only a few states do not allow parole for any life sentences.

"We owe it to the victims, the victims' families and to our communities to ensure that these murderers and rapists -- these predators -- serve the life sentences imposed on them," Glendening said.

In Maryland, where the true death penalty is rarely handed down, the new rule for lifers will have far-reaching consequences within the Division of Correction. It will affect medical costs, perhaps tripling them. It is likely to increase violence and make housing decisions a logistical nightmare as aging lifers need to be segregated from those who might prey on them. It will affect the division's budget as the lifer population swells each year by 80 to 100 new inmates who will never leave.

It will require prisons to deal with everything from puberty to prostate troubles and, ultimately, to help inmates grapple with their own deaths.

"All of a sudden, about a year ago, people sort of woke up and said we have all these people, we're going to have them for their natural life, or for 10 or 20 or 30 years with no parole, so what are we going to do with them?" said Bert Rosefield, an instructor in a new Justice Department program to help prison officials plan for problems.

Today, nearly one in 10 inmates -- more than 2,100 men and women -- is serving a life term in Maryland prisons. That's a rate higher than the District and 38 other states (including Virginia), and one that has jumped 60 percent in the past decade. By contrast, just 14 men sit on death row.

In Virginia, 28 men are on death row, and 53 people have been executed since 1995. Parole was abolished in the state in 1995, but prisoners sentenced to life before then remain eligible for early release. As of Jan. 1, 1999, there were 1,685 people serving life sentences in Virginia, about 6.8 percent of the prison population.

Maryland spends about $44 million each year on lifers. Put another way, state taxpayers will pay at least $1 million on Carter as he goes from young adult through middle age and, finally, death.

But the new policy, prison experts say, raises issues more profound than dollars and cents. They are questions about life and death, retribution and redemption, and how these things are affected by the pull of politics.

A 'Thug' on Hold

There is little about Daniel Carter that inspires sympathy.

Baltimore police detective Martin Young, who investigated Jackson's death, called Carter a "thug." During breaks in his trial, Carter and his friends made veiled threats within earshot of jurors, according to court files and Young.

Carter maintains his innocence. "Why would I want to put myself away like that? I got too much to live for, my whole life ahead of me," he said.

Young said Carter had been in trouble eight times before the murder, including arrests for armed robbery and assault dating to when he was 12 years old. He was sent to a juvenile facility for an assault and a drug possession case, but court files show his progress was deemed poor. A psychologist who examined Carter diagnosed learning disabilities, impulse control problems and a narcissistic personality and said his IQ was 62, according to court files.

Now Carter sits in the House of Correction Annex in Jessup along with about 1,200 other violent criminals, two-thirds of them lifers.

His days go something like this: eat breakfast, go back to the cell; eat lunch, go back to the cell; eat dinner, go back to the cell.

All told, Carter is in his cell for as much as 18 hours a day. He lifts weights and watches soap operas or game shows mainly, but Carter said he also is working toward a GED.

Mostly, Carter seems angry. "I'm not going to spend the rest of my life in here," he said. "They're going to have to kill me first."

His fellow inmates at the Annex, where the state's youngest lifers are housed, are little different -- which has prison officials in a state of alert. Never before have there been such high concentrations of inmates -- most of whom will be around for decades -- with no hope of release.

In the past, said Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services Secretary Stuart O. Simms, lifers were often among the best behaved inmates because their only hope of earning parole came from obeying the rules.

For decades, parole was considered after a lifer had spent at least 15 years behind bars, according to corrections officials. In the 1980s, the minimum for certain crimes was raised to 25 years. Then in 1987, the legislature created a new sentence, life without the possibility of parole.

Today, even those lifers sentenced under the old rules have virtually no chance at parole.

Under Maryland law, the governor must approve the release of anyone sentenced to life. Gov. Harry R. Hughes approved the release of 64 lifers during his two terms, 1979 to 1987. Gov. William Donald Schaefer released 26 lifers from 1987 to 1995.

Glendening, elected on a campaign pledge that he would be tough on crime, announced in his first term that he would not parole anyone sentenced to life.

"If you want to term this more as retribution . . . it's exactly that," Glendening said at the time.

He has made exceptions in four cases when inmates were near death; another inmate died just before his parole papers came through.

The governor's spokesman, Mike Morrill, said Glendening "still believes life means life."

Though the next governor could rescind the no-parole policy, prison experts say political pressures make that unlikely. Being tough on crime, they say, is essential to winning elections, ever since a Massachusetts paroled lifer named Willie Horton derailed Democrat Michael S. Dukakis's presidential campaign with a vicious sexual attack in Oxon Hill.

"It's the politicians who want lifers never to get out of prison," said Dean Burk Foster, a University of Louisiana-Lafayette professor. "From a prison official's point of view, they want people to get out."

One concern is violence. Another is maintaining control.

"Dudes feel they ain't got nothing to lose," Carter said. "There ain't no parole."

Prison managers are concerned about violence, not only against guards but also against older inmates who may be targeted by predators.

This wasn't always a problem, said inmate Charles "Moose" Davis, 62, who looked up to the old-timers when he entered prison decades ago. He thinks young inmates today are different: "Guys stabbing each other and fighting -- that's what worries me," Davis said.

In the old days, he added, "you had hope" and opportunities like college courses and trade schools to fill the time. Now, he said, "you walk around in a circle all day."

Old-Timers' Refuge

Tucked away in the House of Correction is M Dorm, a place for inmates who are too tired to fight. In this tiny corner, it's as if the world inside the walls has fast-forwarded, jumping decades into the future.

Here, no one is younger than 50. It is a place where once-tensed muscles have relaxed, where there is quiet instead of chaos, camaraderie instead of conniving, and where inmates walk freely in and out of cells with no doors.

Most of the men are murderers, yet prison officials say they are not considered security risks.

"There are no fights up here," said Davis, who was sentenced to life at age 21 and lives here with about 40 other men. "They are just trying to get out of here, and they're tired."

Davis's day goes something like this: Every morning at 4, he hoists himself from bed, smokes a cigarette and drinks some coffee. He rubs his arthritic knees, then heads down to the prison infirmary for his insulin.

At 5, he goes to work in the officers' dining hall -- Davis's job for the better part of 27 years -- where a day spent cooking pays $1.35.

After that, afternoons and evenings are free, hours and hours filled with dominoes, pool, telephone and TV.

The key, Davis said, is this: Avoid thinking too much about where the time has gone -- or how much is left.

"I try to think about the good things," he said. "I think about going home, but I don't think about it every day."

Davis, like many other inmates, started off quite differently.

"When he first went in, he was angry," his sister Rosa Hamlin said. "Now he controls his temper."

Numerous studies have shown that the older an inmate, the less likely he is to commit another crime, Foster said.

Charles Davis seems to have followed that trajectory of softening with age.

In the '70s, he was allowed out on work release but ordered back to prison when he twice wandered off. In 1988, prison officials gave him another chance and moved him to a prison camp, where his job was taking care of the grounds.

Four years later, he graduated to a job in the outside world, working days at a restaurant but returning to the prison at night.

"I'd get [to the restaurant] at 5:30 in the morning, take the burglar alarm off. I'm in there two hours before anybody gets there," he recalled. "I was a convict doing life. And I'm sitting there and thinking these people trust me. Ain't that something."

A lifer on work release named Rodney Stokes changed all that when, in 1993, he shot his ex-girlfriend and then himself. The killing made horrifyingly clear to the public that in Maryland, a life sentence didn't necessarily mean life.

The reaction was swift and firm. Davis and the other 133 lifers on work release were rounded up -- including men who had worked on the outside for as long as 10 years.

Two years later, Glendening all but ended parole for lifers.

Now, as the large population of lifers ages, there are new problems the state must deal with: They need eyeglasses and canes; they get tests for Alzheimer's disease; they take blood pressure pills and, in some cases, suffer from cancer.

And one day they will die. "The prospect of dying in prison is a very difficult issue for inmates and their families," said Barbara Boyle, a prison social worker. "The desire is to leave something good behind. By dying in prison, they don't get to do that."

All told, Rosefield said that it costs two to three times as much to hold an older inmate as it does his youthful counterpart. Maryland officials don't have exact figures but estimate that geriatric prisoners cost as much as $69,000 a year, compared with the average inmate's cost of $21,000.

Illnesses such as kidney failure and diabetes strike disproportionately in prison, where about 80 percent of the population has abused drugs or alcohol, said Tony Swetz, prison medical director.

Four thousand inmates are enrolled in "chronic care clinics," which provide regular treatment, sometimes daily, for things like diabetes, high blood pressure, seizures, asthma and heart disease, Swetz said. On top of that, inmates are escorted on thousands of medical visits outside prison walls for things that can't be treated inside.

The total DOC medical bill this year will be $59 million.

Remembering The Victims

Looking at Daniel Carter on one hand and Charles Davis on the other raises a difficult question: Should a person who committed a terrible crime ever go free?

Del. David R. Brinkley (R-Frederick), who has opposed releasing lifers, said: "The argument is kind of about mercy or that these folks are supposedly too old to do any more harm. I'm sorry, I can't buy that argument because their victims aren't here to testify against that."

People like Foster disagree. "The big emphasis is on victims of crime and not on the criminals," he said. "If you look at a lot of criminals, you're usually looking at a lot of victims, too."

The state Commission on Criminal Sentencing Policy has recommended that the governor consider each lifer's case individually. For the past four years, the legislature also has tried unsuccessfully to overturn Glendening's policy.

Roberta Roper, director of the Stephanie Roper Foundation, a victims advocacy group that has lobbied for tougher sentencing, said releasing lifers is "a very complex issue."

"I don't think we can ever make one sentence or one decision that would be appropriate for everyone," she said. "One size doesn't fit all."

Charles Davis agreed.

"We were kids when we did the crime," Davis said. "Now I'm a grown man, but I feel like crying sometimes. That's what they waiting on: for us to die."

Staff researchers Bobbye Pratt and Karl Evanzz contributed to this report.

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