TOWSON, Md. – A man convicted of killing three people in Maryland and Maine in 1987 will be executed April 15, a Baltimore County judge ruled Wednesday.

Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge James Smith denied Steven H. Oken’s final effort to avoid the death penalty for the Nov. 1, 1987, torture, sexual assault and murder of Dawn Garvin of White Marsh.

Smith rejected an argument by Oken’s lawyers that the U.S. Supreme Court nullified Maryland’s death penalty statute in June when it struck down a New Jersey hate crimes law.

Oken killed Garvin, a newlywed, on Nov. 2, 1987.

Two weeks later, he sexually assaulted and murdered his sister-in-law, Patricia Hirt, in his White Marsh townhouse.

He then traveled to Kittery, Maine, where, on the evening of Nov. 16, 1987, he killed Lori Ward, a clerk at a motel where he had stopped.

He was taken into custody in Freeport, Maine, the day after the Ward murder.

Oken was sentenced to death in the Garvin case. He received life sentences in Maryland for assaulting Garvin and murdering Hirt and in Maine for murdering Ward.

Oken is one of four Maryland death row inmates facing possible execution over the next few months, a rare occurrence in a state that uses the death penalty sparingly.