Feds will no longer pursue death penalty against last Maryland death row inmate

BALTIMORE — The last Marylander to sit on death row no longer faces the ultimate penalty.

Federal prosecutors signaled Wednesday that they will no longer pursue the death penalty against a 41-year-old Maryland man who was sentenced to be executed for his role in the 2002 kidnapping and murder of a D.C. police lieutenant’s son.

Kenneth J. Lighty, who was 23 when he was sentenced to die in 2006, was the last Maryland resident on federal death row before his sentence was vacated last year, according to death penalty databases and his lawyers.

He remained on death row in the federal system even after Maryland abolished executions for state crimes in 2013.

Lighty, of Hillcrest Heights in Prince George’s County, is scheduled for a resentencing in June because a judge threw out his death sentence last year. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ellen E. Nazmy filed notice Wednesday that the government will not seek the death penalty when Lighty receives his new sentence.

He still could be sentenced to a lengthy prison term. His two co-defendants in the slaying both received life in prison.

A federal jury recommended the death penalty for Lighty in November 2005, after convicting him of kidnapping and murder in the slaying of 19-year-old Eric Larry Hayes II.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said the three co-defendants abducted Hayes from southeast Washington, D.C., by forcing him at gunpoint into their car on Jan. 3, 2002.

The three men transported Hayes to Prince George’s County, pistol whipping him and shooting him several times in the face, head and limbs, the office said in 2006. Hayes’ body was found off a residential street in Temple Hills. He was the son of a D.C. police lieutenant, though prosecutors said the crime was not related to his father’s job.

Three weeks after the killing, evidence showed Lighty and one of the other co-defendants participated in a drive-by shooting that killed a 22-year-old man and injured two other people, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Lighty maintained his innocence at sentencing, according to reports from the time.

A lawyer for Lighty, Assistant Federal Public Defender Beth Ann Muhlhauser, did not respond immediately to a request for comment Wednesday.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Baltimore declined to comment. Family members of Hayes could not be reached for comment.

Lighty was the second Maryland man placed on death row in the federal system when he was sentenced, according to news reports. The other, Dustin John Higgs, was executed in early 2021 during a spate of federal executions under President Donald Trump.

The U.S. Department of Justice halted federal executions in July 2021, after President Joe Biden took office. Federal prosecutors still can seek the death penalty and a future presidential administration could reverse the moratorium.

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