Wesley Baker

Wesley Eugene Baker (March 26, 1958 – December 5, 2005) was an American convicted murderer executed by the U.S. state of Maryland. He was sentenced to death for the June 6, 1991, robbery and murder of Jane Frances Tyson, a mother and grandmother, in front of two of her grandchildren in Catonsville. Baker was the last person to be executed in Maryland before capital punishment was abolished in 2013.

Early life Baker was born to an underage rape victim and suffered physical and sexual abuse during his childhood by his mother, stepfather and two teenage girls. At age 15, he fathered a child with a 28-year-old heroin user while himself suffering from alcohol and heroin addiction.

Murder Wesley Baker approached Jane Tyson, 49, on June 6, 1991, in the parking lot of Catonsville's Westview Mall as she got into her car with her grandchildren, a 6-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl, after shoe shopping. He placed a gun to her ear and demanded her purse and then, without warning, fired the gun, killing her instantly. Baker fled to where his accomplice was waiting with a Chevrolet Blazer. A member of the public spotted the two fleeing in a car. He noted the license number and called the police, who apprehended Wesley Baker and Gregory Lawrence a short time later.

Trial and appeals Baker was convicted by a jury in the Circuit Court for Harford County on October 26, 1992, of first degree murder, robbery with a deadly weapon, and use of a handgun in the commission of a felony. Four days later, Circuit Court Judge Cypert O. Whitfill sentenced Baker to death for the murder and to two consecutive 20-year terms for the robbery and handgun convictions. On direct appeal, the Maryland Court of Appeals affirmed Baker's convictions and death sentence. Lawrence was convicted of the same charges a year earlier and received life in prison plus 33 years.

Baker received a stay of execution in 2002, days before he was scheduled to die, when Governor Parris N. Glendening imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in the state to allow a study by Professor Raymond Paternoster of the University of Maryland, College Park to be completed. Paternoster found that prosecutors are 2.5 times more likely to seek the death penalty in cases where African Americans are accused of murdering whites than in cases where whites are accused of murdering whites.

On November 28, 2005, William Cardinal Keeler (Archbishop of Baltimore) visited Baker in prison. It was the first time the cardinal had visited a death row inmate. After meeting with him, Keeler made a personal plea, together with the two other Catholic bishops in Maryland, for the governor to grant clemency and commute the sentence to life imprisonment without parole. Governor Ehrlich lifted the moratorium when he was elected in 2003.

Execution Baker was executed on December 5, 2005, and was pronounced dead at 9:18 p.m. EST after being executed by lethal injection.

Baker was not asked by prison officials if he had a final statement. His lawyers said he had made his peace and expressed remorse for what he had done. Jennifer McMenamin, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun who witnessed the execution, said Baker did not show much reaction during the injection of the lethal doses of chemicals. His breathing did become more rapid and loud, with a gasping and sucking nature. Unlike other U.S. states, Maryland did not offer the condemned a special last meal; instead prisoners set to be executed received whatever was on the menu the day of their death. Baker's last meal consisted of breaded fish, pasta marinara, green beans, orange fruit punch, bread, and milk. On December 31, 2014, Gov. Martin O'Malley commuted the sentences of the final four condemned inmates to life imprisonment, making Baker's execution the last execution in the state of Maryland.