But Taylor never made it out. In 2020, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) rejected his release, overturning the decision of the 11-member parole board. No reasons were given.
“That was a crushing feeling,” Taylor, 50, said last fall from a medium-security prison in Jessup, Md. “You feel like you’re on the verge of having some sort of freedom, and they hand you a piece of paper that just says, ‘no.’ ”
For decades, politics has shaped the parole process for those serving life sentences in Maryland. In the heat of a tough-on-crime campaign in the 1990s, a governor declared that he would reject all “lifers” for parole even after parole commissioners had recommended their release. The policy, maintained by governors from both parties, left hundreds of prisoners with parole-eligible sentences — the vast majority of them Black men — to grow old and die in prison.
