Off-duty D.C. police officer Oliver Wendell Smith Jr. was fatally shot in Prince George’s County 14 years ago. The killers were caught and sentenced to long prison sentences. But Smith’s family and other survivors of violence in Maryland say they are being repeatedly victimized by an obscure law that allows offenders to ask the trial judge to reopen their cases in an effort to have their sentences reduced.

Judges can choose to release offenders or drastically reduce their sentences even if they’ve been denied parole and have lost all court appeals.