Professor, students have special relationship with death-row inmate

Published: 2006-02-20

BALTIMORE (CNS) -- When Gertrude D. "Trudy" Conway visited convicted murderer Vernon L. Evans Jr. on death row in downtown Baltimore Feb. 4, the philosophy professor at Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg thought it would be the last time she would see her friend alive. Evans was scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection the week of Feb. 5, but his life was spared temporarily by a last-minute stay of execution granted by the Maryland Court of Appeals Feb. 6. Conway has been corresponding and visiting with Evans ever since Gwendolyn Bates, one of Evans' sisters, told the professor during a national convention of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty in 2004 that her brother would welcome interaction with the Emmitsburg professor and her students. Evans was convicted of the 1983 contract murders of David Scott Piechowicz and Susan Kennedy. While he acknowledges that he played a role in the circumstances that led to their murders, Evans insists that he did not do the killing, according to Conway.

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