ANNAPOLIS | The O’Malley administration has failed to give a full account of state police surveillance on antiwar and anti-death penalty groups, and state lawmakers must expand the investigation beyond former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.’s term, say activist groups planning to testify at a General Assembly hearing Tuesday on the issue.
“Our role will be to focus on the remaining unanswered question,” said David Rocah, staff lawyer with the ACLU of Maryland. “I think we need to know the full extent of what the state police were doing and why.”
Former Attorney General Stephen H. Sachs last week released his report about the state police’s infiltration of groups opposed to the execution of convicted murderer Wesley Baker. But the report focused on a relatively narrow time period, to the dismay of civil liberties activists who have been battling with state law enforcement about the issue since 2006.
“There must be full accountability within the Maryland State Police for this surveillance, which in our view amounted to an outrageous violation of the First Amendment rights of these groups and individuals, beyond being a disturbing invasion of privacy,” writes Max Obuszewski, an antiwar activist, in a letter to be released Tuesday
Mr. Obuszewski, a 62-year-old Quaker, had his name entered into a terrorist-tracking database by state police during the surveillance. Three other activists, including two Catholic nuns, also were entered into the database maintained by the state police, according to the Sachs report.
Activists say that information, coupled with other documents that showed Baltimore police coordinating surveillance of antiwar activists with the National Security Agency, prove the surveillance was more widespread than state police and local law enforcement have acknowledged.
But the Sachs report focused primarily on surveillance by the state police that happened under Mr. Ehrlich, a Republican, from March 2005 to May 2006. The report excluded surveillance by Baltimore police during then-Mayor Martin O’Malley’s tenure, which sparked the ACLU information request in 2006.
Mr. Sachs was sharply critical of the state police in his report, blaming the surveillance on an “obliviousness” to civil rights and larger systemic problems of control and communication in the agency’s bureaucracy.
Mr. Ehrlich and then-state police Superintendent Col. Thomas E. “Tim” Hutchins declined to be interviewed for the Sachs report. Mr. Hutchins had previously said he was unaware of the surveillance by troopers under his direction. However, the Sachs report revealed that Mr. Hutchins knew about the infiltration during his tenure.
Mr. Hutchins is expected to testify Tuesday before the hearing of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee.
State Police Superintendent Terrence B. Sheridan, who took over last year, is also expected to testify at the hearing.
A state police spokesman said the ACLU’s concerns are likely to be addressed at the hearing.
The ACLU is still locked in a struggle with the police to release additional records. The group filed additional requests for information on behalf 32 other groups that think they were targeted by law enforcement agencies.
State law does not bar law enforcement from spying on interest groups. The ACLU has drafted legislation to outlaw the practice, but has not said whether lawmakers in the state’s Democrat-controlled General Assembly will support the measures.
Mr. O’Malley, a Democrat, last week resisted the call for new laws limiting police surveillance, saying he would prefer that the state police draft its own regulations.
Mr. Sachs said Superintendent Sheridan is more likely than his predecessor to honor civil liberties because he “gets it.”
But activists are skeptical about whether police will change without added pressure.
“There were policies in place, and the state police just ignored them,” Mr. Rocah said. “I don’t think that writing the standards should simply be left up to the agency that violated them.”
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