BRIAN WITTE
Associated Press

BALTIMORE (AP) — Maryland’s attorney general has taken steps that could result in the revocation of death sentences for four inmates who were sentenced to die before the state abolished capital punishment last year.

Doug Gansler announced Thursday that he was filing a brief with the Maryland Court of Special Appeals to support attorneys for Jody Lee Miles. They contend his death sentence is illegal.

The repeal applied only to future death sentences, leaving four men on death row.

Gansler’s brief applies specifically to Miles, but he says it would leave the door “wide open” for attorneys for the others to seek an illegal sentence ruling. The brief seeks a life sentence without possibility of parole for Miles.

He was convicted in the 1997 robbery and murder of Edward Atkinson in Wicomico County.

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