The young age of state prison inmate Brandon Morris should not influence the judge deciding whether he deserves the death penalty for murdering a correctional officer, prosecutors said Thursday.
Morris, 22, of Baltimore City, faces life in prison without parole or death by lethal injection, according to state sentencing guidelines, for shooting Correctional Officer Jeffery Wroten to death at Washington County Hospital in January 2006.
Washington County State?s Attorney Joseph Michael told retired Anne Arundel Circuit Judge Joseph Manck during closing arguments Thursday in Howard Circuit Court that Morris had been living on his own since the age of 14 and charged as an adult for armed robbery and first-degree assault at 17.
“By the time a person has elected to be on his own for six years, he has forfeited the shield of youth and embraced adulthood,” Michael said.
“We?ve got thousands of [20-year-olds] in Iraq. Are they children, or are they men and women?”
But Morris? attorney Arcangelo Tuminelli said Morris? judgment was impaired by the “emotional disturbances” of his childhood on the crime-ridden streets of Baltimore City.
“Adversity before the age of 10 leaves a lifelong legacy of deviant behavior. … None of this is the child?s fault,” Tuminelli said.
“Maybe 2,000 years ago you cut someone?s hand off if they stole something … but what we?ve learned in 2,000 years of Western culture and science is … we don?t kill the weak, we don?t kill the feeble, we don?t kill the disadvantaged. We kill those who merit the death penalty.”
Prosecutors said Morris is a threat to correctional officers unless he?s executed.
But Tuminelli said Morris will go to a maximum-security prison and be segregated from other inmates until he proves through good behavior that he can join the general prison population.
In addition, Tuminelli said Manck won?t give the Wroten family closure by sentencing Morris to death, because of the years of appeals and retrials.
“In my humble opinion, you?re not doing the victims any favor by imposing the death sentence,” he said.
Manck began deliberations Thursday afternoon and is expected to render his decision Monday.
