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Inmate gets life sentence for killing guard

Healthcare Security Weekly, February 4, 2008

A judge on January 28 sentenced a 22-year-old Baltimore City man to life without parole for the shooting death of a correctional officer while escaping from Washington County Hospital in Hagerstown, MD two years ago.

The judge's decision denying the prosecution's request for the death penalty for Brandon T. Morris disappointed and angered the family of slain officer Jeffery A. Wroten, reported the Baltimore Examiner. The judge denied the death penalty, saying the victim's family would not have closure during the years of appeals and retrials that would accompany a death sentence

Morris was convicted by a jury January 18 of shooting Wroten with the guard's service revolver and then briefly taking a visitor hostage before forcing a taxi driver at gunpoint to drive him away from the hospital. Morris, a state prison inmate, was being treated at the hospital for a self-inflicted injury.

Following Wroten's death, procedures for guarding hospitalized inmates were changed so that two officers--one armed and one unarmed--guard the inmate, reported the Herald-Mail. The unarmed officer handles the inmate.

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