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MARYLAND, USA. WESLEY BAKER EXECUTED FOR KILLING TEACHER'S AIDE
December 5, 2005: convicted murderer Wesley Eugene Baker was executed in Maryland for fatally shooting a teacher's aide in front of two of her grandchildren. Baker, 47, died by lethal injection at 9:18 pm EST (0218 GMT) at the Maryland Diagnostic and Classification Center in Baltimore. Baker shot Jane Tyson, a 49-year-old teacher's aide, in the head and stole her purse in 1991 outside a shopping mall as two of her grandchildren watched.
Last week, a federal judge rejected arguments on Baker's behalf that the death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
Baker's case attracted the attention of Roman Catholic Cardinal William Keeler, the archbishop of Baltimore, who met with Baker and said he would appeal to Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich Jr. to commute the sentence to life without parole.
Also in hopes of having Baker's sentence overturned or commuted, his attorneys had argued that the sentencing judge did not hear what they said could have been mitigating circumstances that could have led to a sentence of life without parole instead of death.
Baker's attorneys wanted to introduce details of his life -- his mother became pregnant with him when she was raped at age 12 or 13, he suffered physical and sexual abuse as a child and a drug overdose at age 12 -- but Baker refused to allow them to reveal the information in court.
He told his attorneys he did not want his mother humiliated publicly.
Last Friday, in North Carolina, double murderer Kenneth Lee Boyd became the 1,000th prisoner executed in the United States since the reinstatement of capital punishment. The US Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to be brought back in 1976 after a nine-year unofficial moratorium.
Baker's execution was the fifth in Maryland since 1976. (Sources: Reuters, 05/12/2005)
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