By DAVID DISHNEAU
The Associated Press
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ELLICOTT CITY, Md. — A judge on Monday sentenced a state prison inmate to life without parole for murdering a correctional officer while escaping from a hospital two years ago.
Brandon T. Morris, 22, of Baltimore, was convicted earlier this month of murder for killing prison guard Jeffery A. Wroten, 44, at Washington County Hospital in Hagerstown. After shooting Wroten in the head with the guard’s own gun as he pleaded for his life early in the morning of Jan. 26, 2006, Morris took a hospital visitor briefly hostage and then carjacked a taxi.
Morris forced the cabbie at gunpoint to drive him into nearby Pennsylvania, where the driver deliberately crashed into a concrete barrier. Morris fled back into Maryland, where he was captured in an industrial park.
He had been brought to the hospital from nearby Roxbury Correctional Institution for removal of a sewing needle that he had jabbed so deeply into his abdomen that it pierced his liver.
Prosecutors pushed for the death penalty, but the judge rejected the request. Washington County State’s Attorney Charles Strong said he has a continuing concern about the safety of correctional officers guarding Morris because “he has shown he is violent.”
Morris also was sentenced to 301 years for his conviction on other charges.
“I think it was the appropriate outcome given the evidence,” Defense Attorney Arcangelo Tuminelli said.