Maine woman’s killer gets June execution date Court rejected appeal of motel clerk murderer

BALTIMORE – A Maryland judge set a June execution date for a man convicted of killing three women, including a motel desk clerk in Kittery, Maine.

The U.S. Supreme Court last week rejected the appeal of murderer Steven Oken.

Judge John Turnbull II signed a warrant that sets an execution date for a five-day period beginning June 14.

Barring intervention by a trial or appellate court, Oken would be the first person executed in Maryland since Tyrone Gilliam in 1998, said Stephen Bailey, a deputy state’s attorney in Baltimore County where the warrant was signed.

“Our office believes that any claim that had any merit at all would have been raised before now,” Bailey said.

Oken was convicted of the 1987 slaying of a 20-year-old newlywed, Dawn Marie Garvin. She was the first of three women he was convicted of killing in Maryland and Maine in 1987.

Two weeks after killing Garvin, he sexually assaulted and murdered his sister-in-law Patricia Hirt in Maryland. He then traveled to Maine, where he killed Lori Ward, a motel clerk. He was sentenced to life in prison for the slayings of Hirt and Ward.

Fred Warren Bennett, Oken’s attorney, said he will explore both judicial options and, as a last resort, a partial commutation from Gov. Robert Ehrlich, “which would be the last thing we can do on behalf of Mr. Oken.”

“And we have up to and including the week of June 14th, which is the week that his execution has been set, to work on those matters, which we will – around the clock if necessary,” Bennett said.

This is the third warrant of execution that has been signed for Oken. Two others were stayed in 2002 and 2003, Bailey said.

In November, a divided Maryland Court of Appeals upheld the death sentence for Oken.

The November ruling came in Oken’s fourth appeal to the state’s highest court and was the second time his sentence was upheld by a 4-3 vote.

Oken’s appeal in that ruling involved Maryland’s use of aggravating factors, which weigh in favor of a death sentence, and mitigating factors, which weigh against a death sentence.

Oken’s lawyers argued that the state statute was unconstitutional under a Supreme Court ruling last year in Ring v. Arizona.

The majority ruling held that the Supreme Court’s Ring opinion “bears no adverse implications for the Maryland death penalty statute.”