Michael Austin was a soft-spoken young man with a deep complexion and towering 6-foot-5-inch frame.
The man who killed a security guard in 1974 at a Northeast Baltimore grocery store was a light-skinned man of short and stocky proportions.
But the physical difference between Austin and the real killer did not matter to the judge who sentenced 26-year-old Austin to life in prison plus 15 years.
“The mere fact of being put in such a horrendous situation psychologically affected me still when I tried to reorient into society,” said Austin, now 60, who was pardoned in 2003 by Gov. Robert Ehrlich after spending 27 years in prison.
The eyewitness was a convicted criminal, and the prosecutor admitted to Austin that he had taken the case as a political advantage during re-election.
“The most important thing for me now is trying to get my life back together,” he said.
This story is all too common, according to anti-death penalty activists, who say the risk of executing an innocent person won’t cease until the death penalty is repealed.
“You can always release an innocent man from prison, but you can’t release him from the grave,” said Gordon Steidl, 57, who spent 17 years in an Illinois prison for a double-homicide he did not commit.
His young children were adults with their own children when he was released in 2004.
“It’s a barbaric system, and we don’t know how many are buried innocent,” he said.
Steidl and Austin joined three other wrongfully convicted men Friday in Annapolis to share their horrific experiences prior to the Maryland Death Penalty Commission’s discussion of DNA evidence in capital cases.
While popular television shows have convinced people that DNA evidence is a surefire identification tool, public defender Michele Nethercott said the science is far from perfect because of underfunded labs with minimal staff and enormous backlogs of evidence.
“The DNA test is only as good the person who administers it,” Nethercott said.
“No one can honestly say that it can ensure there’s not a risk of executing innocent people.”
The commission hearing Friday was one of several held before the panel issues recommendations to the General Assembly on Dec. 15.
The state’s highest court ruled in 2006 that a legislative committee didn’t properly approve Maryland’s lethal injection protocol, and executions can’t resume until Gov. Martin O’Malley’s administration submits new rules for the committee to approve.
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