PROFESSOR BRENT E. NEWTON FILES MOTION THAT PREVENTS DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE FROM SEEKING THE DEATH PENALTY
June 2025 — The same day that Professor Brent E. Newton finished grading final exams in May, he received a call from the federal public defender in the District of Maryland asking if he would accept a court appointment to file a motion to strike the Department of Justice's recent notice of its change in position about whether it would seek the death penalty against a man charged with murder in federal court in Baltimore.
Newton is one of the few attorneys in Maryland with any death penalty experience, so the federal public defender asked Newton to accept the appointment for the case, which was on an expedited schedule. He agreed on the condition that his involvement would just be to litigate the motion to strike.
Newton filed the motion, the government responded, and he replied, all in a two-week period. On June 18, 2025, the federal court in Baltimore granted Newton’s motion and precluded the Department of Justice from seeking the death penalty.
The motion to strike is available here and the court's order granting it is available here.
In 2009, Practitioner in Residence Brent E. Newton was appointed as deputy director of the United States Sentencing Commission, a position he held until January 2019. Professor Newton also practices civil, criminal, and immigration law in Maryland and Texas. In addition, he has been a lecturer, adjunct professor, or visiting professor at several other law schools, including American and Georgetown Universities, the University of Houston Law Center, and Seoul National University in South Korea. Professor Newton has been an elected member of the American Law Institute since 2010.