Maryland's highest court issued a ruling that restores...

Maryland's highest court issued a ruling that restores the death sentence of a man convicted in the killings of an elderly couple.
The decision by the Court of Appeals sends Lawrence Michael Borchardt Sr. back to death row nearly 20 months (see May 26, 2005) after Anne Arundel County judge Pamela L. North found that an attorney who defended the convicted killer at a capital sentencing hearing in 2000 provided ineffective counsel. The judge granted Borchardt a new sentencing hearing.
The high court found, however, that the actions taken by the defense attorney amounted to a conscious trial strategy rather than errors or ineffective representation.
"Simply because counsel's strategy did not succeed, and Borchardt was sentenced to death, it does not follow that defense counsel were ineffective," Judge Irma S. Raker wrote in the majority opinion.
Borchardt, 55, was convicted of stabbing Joseph and Bernice Ohler in their home on Thanksgiving Day 1998. The couple had twice given money to Borchardt, a heroin addict who was going door to door claiming that his wife needed cancer treatments. He killed the couple when they told him they didn't have any more money to give.