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Barring another legal maneuver by Oken’s attorneys or a grant of clemency from Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., Oken may be executed before midnight tomorrow.
The Supreme Court’s decision came at the end of a day that began with high hopes for Oken. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Va., had handed him a victory, upholding a federal judge’s decision to grant an indefinite stay of execution.
“I’m very disappointed, and Steven, of course, is crestfallen,” Fred Warren Bennett, Oken’s lead attorney, said last night. “This morning we were floating at the top of a roller coaster. Now we are at the bottom. We went downhill fast, with a lot of grease on the tracks.”
Bennett acknowledged that any final legal maneuvers would be “a longshot.” He said the governor has been asked to make a decision by this afternoon on whether to grant clemency.
Greg Massoni, Ehrlich’s press secretary, said Oken and his attorneys “have exhausted all avenues, and the governor respects the court’s decision.” Massoni said no decision had been made on the clemency request.
Also last night, the Supreme Court denied an earlier motion filed by Oken’s attorneys to delay his execution.
Outside death row
The father of one of Oken’s three murder victims said the Supreme Court decisions brought him a sense of relief.
“I feel like a ton of bricks have been lifted off my shoulders,” said Fred J. Romano, whose daughter, Dawn Marie Garvin, was killed by Oken in 1987. “It was a really stressful situation today, and it was really getting to me. When I woke up this morning, I felt washed out … but I did not feel finished.”
Oken’s father, David Oken, said last night that he did not want to talk.
Garvin’s relatives and friends, and other death penalty supporters, at times gathered outside death row in Baltimore this week. Their mood turned celebratory last night, with some shaking tambourines and bells and singing, “Hey, hey, hey, goodbye.”
Fred A. Romano, Garvin’s brother, stood along East Madison Street wearing a noose around his neck, swinging the end of the rope at passing motorists.
The younger Romano, who had dark circles under his eyes and had lost his voice from chanting and shouting, said he had been confronting a gathering of death penalty opponents when a prosecutor called his cellular phone to tell him about the Supreme Court decision. He said he ran back up the street singing.
“This is a good step, and we feel like it’s going to happen,” he said. “But it’s not over until he’s dead.”
Monique Klapka, the eldest daughter of Oken’s second murder victim, Patricia Antoinette Hirt, stood with the Romanos outside the prison last night.
“We are reminded of him constantly,” she said of her mother’s killer. “Every couple of years, with every appeal, we have to relive what happened.”
Mounted police officers watched over demonstrators, who were both for and against the death penalty.
At East Madison Street and Fallsway, a somber group of about 30 protesters stood vigil with white candles. Every once in a while, the group would break into a chant: “They say death row, we say hell no.”
Michael Stark said he and his fellow anti-death-penalty activists were angry and disappointed.
“We started with realistic expectations, understanding that Oken was at the end of his appeals, and there is a pro-death-penalty governor in office,” said Stark, the Baltimore-Washington coordinator of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. “Then, out of the blue, a federal court recognized that the state was playing fast and loose with its execution procedures. A lot of us had a lot of hope out here.”
‘It’s heartbreaking’
Baltimore County State’s Attorney Sandra A. O’Connor, whose office secured a conviction and death sentence for Oken 13 years ago, said she was pleased by the Supreme Court’s decision – especially after two days of disappointments.
“We’re the ones that have had to call the victims’ [families] every time, both yesterday and this morning, with news that we knew would devastate them,” she said last night. “It’s heartbreaking. I think everyone just wants this to be over.”
Oken was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of Garvin, a White Marsh newlywed. He also was convicted of killing Hirt, his sister-in-law, in White Marsh and Lori Elizabeth Ward, a motel clerk, in Kittery, Maine.
In April, a Baltimore County judge signed a death warrant scheduling Oken’s execution for this week. He has twice avoided scheduled executions after the Maryland Court of Appeals granted him stays.
Legal challenges
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Oken, 42, has mounted a challenge to the state’s lethal injection process, but he lost a key round in his legal fight last week when the Maryland Court of Appeals, in a 6-1 vote, turned down his request for another delay in his execution.
Oken’s attorneys filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt and argued Monday that the execution should be delayed to allow them to pursue their challenge to the lethal injection process.
A lawyer for Oken said there was a leak in the intravenous line that delivered the anesthetic and deadly chemicals during the state’s most recent execution, that of Tyrone X. Gilliam in 1998. That problem, the lawyer said, raised questions about whether the state could perform an execution in a humane way.
The Oken lawyers also complained that the state had provided to them only days earlier an incomplete version of its execution procedures, which had recently been amended.
In an order posted Tuesday morning, U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte granted Oken an indefinite stay of execution and set a hearing for July 19. Attorneys for the state appealed.
About 11:30 a.m. yesterday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Appeals Court in Richmond declined to overturn that stay. Attorneys for the state filed an “emergency application” to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court issued its decision at 7:35 p.m.
Three Supreme Court justices – John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer – noted in the decision last night that they would deny the state’s application, according to a court spokesman.
Scott S. Oakley, an assistant state attorney general, said the decision removed any legal impediments to acting on Oken’s death warrant.
“We are very gratified that the Supreme Court has recognized what we have been trying to demonstrate throughout all of these state and federal court proceedings – and that is that the state of Maryland is prepared to carry out the sentence of the Circuit Court for Baltimore County in a humane and dignified manner,” Oakley said.
Sun staff writer David Nitkin contributed to this article.