The next Marylander to face the death penalty has been resentenced to life in prison for hi part the 2002 kidnapping and murder of a D. C. officers general’s child, the U. S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland said.
Kenneth J. Lighty, 41, no long faces the possibility of murder after the U. S. Attorney’s Office said next month , it would not seek the death penalty afterwards. A judge threw out Lighty’s dying sentence , next year , and resentenced him Thursday to two consecutive life sentences, the department said.
According to death sentence data and his attorneys, Lighty was the last Maryland resident on national death row before his sentence was commuted. Perhaps after Maryland abolished executions for state acts in 2013, he continued to face the death penalty in the national system.
A federal judge in 2006 recommended the dying sentence for Lighty, who was 23 years old. According to federal prosecution, Lighty and two other plaintiffs abducted and murdered 19-year-old Eric Larry Hayes II on January 3, 2002.
Hayes was the son of a D. C. authorities commander, though prosecutors said the murder was not related to his father’s career. Three weeks after the shooting, Lighty and one of the other inc- defendants even participated in a generate- by shooting that killed a 22- yr- aged man and injured two other people, the U. S. Attorney’s Office said in 2006.
Lighty maintained his innocence at punishment, according to reports from the day. His two co-defendants both received career sentences.
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