Why
Vernon Evans, Jr. Should Not Be Put To Death
Vernon Evans, Jr. was sentenced to death for the April 28, 1983 murders
of David Scott Piechowicz and Susan Kennedy. Piechowicz and his wife,
Cheryl, had been scheduled to testify in an upcoming federal criminal
trial against Anthony Grandison.
1. There is strong evidence — never heard by the jury — that Evans was not the shooter and therefore is not subject to the death penalty under Maryland law.
* Vernon is eligible for the death penalty only if he was the actual shooter. A number of witnesses — including the only eyewitness to the crime itself — never testified at Vernon’s trial or sentencing. Since then, the eyewitness has testified under oath that the shooter was a lot taller than Vernon (who is only 5’2” and nicknamed “Shorty”) and that the shooter’s clothes did not match what Vernon was wearing at the time of the murders. Other witnesses have corroborated this account and have cast doubt on the testimony of the State’s witnesses.
* These witnesses and other witnesses with important information never testified in Vernon’s defense because Vernon’s lawyers bungled their investigation and the Baltimore County State’s Attorney failed to provide Vernon’s lawyers with crucial FBI witness interview reports. The mistakes of Vernon’s lawyers and the State’s failure to turn over required information deprived Vernon of his rights under the Constitution.
2. A recent study done by the University of Maryland demonstrates that the death penalty in Maryland is being applied in a racially biased manner.
* The study reports that, in Baltimore County, black defendants who murder white victims are more likely than white defendants (and more likely than black defendants who kill black victims) to (1) have the State’s Attorney seek a death sentence initially, (2) have the State’s Attorney continue to pursue the death penalty, (3) have their cases advance to a death-penalty trial, and (4) be sentenced to death. These results were confirmed even after the study controlled for other variables.
* There is a substantial likelihood that Vernon would not be under sentence of death if (1) he was not black; (2) the victims were not white; and (3) the offense had occurred in any other Maryland county.
* At this very moment, the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office is not uniformly seeking death warrants. While several other defendants have been permitted to litigate (and are currently litigating) issues surrounding the race study, the State’s Attorney’s Office has sought and obtained a warrant to execute Vernon during the week of April 18 — prior to the completion of the race-study litigation in Vernon’s case and the other cases.
3. The Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office discriminated against African Americans when it selected jurors at Evans’s trial.
* The U.S. Constitution prohibits a prosecutor from striking jurors because of their race. In Vernon’s 1984 trial, the prosecutor used 8 of his 10 peremptory strikes (80%) against African Americans, even though they were only 20% of the potential jurors. This racial discrimination by the government taints Vernon’s conviction and warrants a commutation of his death sentence.
4. The jury would have spared Evans’s life if it had been given accurate information about his parole eligibility or the option of sentencing him to life without the possibility of parole.
* The jury sentenced Vernon to death because it was told, inaccurately, that if it did not, Vernon might be released from prison on parole.
* A number of the jurors later said that they would not have voted for the death penalty if they had been given the option of sentencing Vernon to life without parole. Today, Maryland law provides a jury with precisely that option. And since death sentences require a unanimous jury, just one vote against the death penalty would have spared Vernon’s life.
5. Vernon’s sentence is unconstitutional for other reasons under very recent cases decided by the Supreme Court.
Vernon has a weblog in which he responds to people's questions about his situation. You can read it online by clicking here: Meet Vernon Evans
More information about Vernon's case, including a video that his family made to ask for clemency, can be found here: SaveVernonEvans.org