When Walter Lomax went to prison 35 years ago, he was a high school dropout with a list of serious criminal charges and convictions that included car theft, armed robbery - and murder. The man portrayed by prosecutors as a cold-blooded killer who fatally shot a neighborhood supermarket manager during a robbery has always maintained he is innocent of that crime.

Lomax, sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, has used his time behind bars to finish high school, earn an associate's degree and prove himself trustworthy during work-release programs and on family leave.

This fall, as the graying, 6-foot-tall Lomax reached age 55, the Maryland Parole Commission again asked the state to set him free.

The petition was the parole commission's fourth such recommendation during the past 12 years to reward the model inmate for turning his life around, and it came with the support of others, including Centurion Ministries, a nonprofit inmate-advocacy group in Princeton, N.J., that successfully fought last year for the freedom of Michael Austin, who was wrongly convicted of murder.

Lomax "passed every one of our tests," said Patricia K. Cushwa, parole commission chairman, who called his performance "unusual."

But for all the growing support, Gov. Parris N. Glendening held to his policy of not releasing inmates serving life sentences unless they are old or deathly ill. On Thursday, the departing governor denied parole for Lomax and nine other lifers.

"The public perception is life means life," Glendening said in a recent interview. "I've stated strongly my feelings on this issue. I still think the public wants an inmate sentenced to life to serve that sentence."

Over the years, prisoners' rights groups have challenged the governor's position, calling it bad public policy. Glendening has released just six of the 31 lifers recommended for parole - all of them elderly or dying - while the number of violent offenders serving life sentences in the prison system has risen more than 65 percent during the past decade to 2,158, according to public safety officials.

"Do you think that [policy] promotes an inmate who is going to rehabilitate himself or instead a no-hope situation that creates violence in the institutions?" asks Steve Meehan, counsel to Prison Rights Information System of Maryland Inc., an organization that deals with issues of confinement and due process, and has worked for Lomax's release. "Why behave yourself?"

Lomax's supporters, who also include state Sen. Nathaniel J. McFadden, the recently appointed Senate majority leader, and Dels. Clarence Davis and Talmadge Branch, all East Baltimore lawmakers who know Lomax or the Lomax family, plan to turn for help to Gov.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., who has said he would consider parole for violent offenders on a case-by-case basis.

A tougher mission

Centurion Ministries has set out on the more arduous mission of proving Lomax's innocence in the 1967 killing. It took up Austin's cause in 1996, and that led to a Baltimore Circuit Court judge's overturning a 1975 verdict and his life sentence.

Joseph H. Thomas, Lomax's lawyer 35 years ago, said he always maintained Lomax should not have been convicted, and he wants to see him freed. "I had over 6,000 cases, 3,000 criminal," Thomas said. "This is the only one I feel bad about."

But there is no apparent DNA evidence, which has helped prove the innocence of other prisoners. Among them is Bernard Webster of Baltimore, a 40-year-old who was freed Nov. 7 after serving 20 years in prison on a rape conviction.

And with memories of the 1967 shooting fading, documents becoming harder to find and elderly witnesses dying, building a case for Lomax's wrongful conviction is increasingly difficult. Centurion Ministries says, however, that it intends to back Lomax until he is free. "We're going to spend every amount of energy we have to free him," said James C. McCloskey, Centurion's executive director.

Lomax was indicted for a series of crimes that began July 21, 1967.

On that day, after closing time, a burglar broke into Peltzer's Sporting Goods store at 2311 E. Monument St. and stole $1,062.97 worth of guns and ammunition.

Based on the sequence of indictments against Lomax, nothing happened until more than two months later, when an armed robber terrorized several local businesses and at least one Baltimore resident. The holdups of a pharmacy, two bars and a grocery store were all linked ballistically, according to court records and newspaper accounts.

On Nov. 4, 1967, an armed robber assaulted John Baranowski and stole his Buick, keys, wallet, $300 cash and a white-gold wristwatch.

On Nov. 15, 1967, a man entered the Gardenville Pharmacy in the 5400 block of Belair Road and robbed pharmacist Harry Greenberg. When another person in the store, Michael J. Grossfeld, startled the gunman, he fired a wild shot that struck the pharmacist's wife, Bertha Greenberg, in the chest.

On Nov. 25, 1967, a robber stormed into Joe's Taproom in the 1700 block of Chesapeake Ave., assaulting and striking bartender James Dorsey with a gun, causing it to fire.

On Nov. 27, 1967, a man entered Freeburger's Stag Bar (also known as the Vilma Bar) in the 3400 block of Belair Road and fatally shot Melvin Saunders, a bar patron and an assistant manager of a Harford Road auto supply store. The gunman then robbed nine others in the tavern, wounding another person and taking cash and a gun.

On Dec. 2, 1967, a gunman entered the Giles Food Market in the 900 block of E. Patapsco Ave. and fatally shot the night manager, Robert A. Brewer, before robbing the store.

About 45 minutes later, the shooter returned to Joe's Taproom and robbed it again. This time, bartender Jesse L. Atkinson was shot and killed.

As the cases became increasingly publicized through newspaper articles, Lomax emerged as a suspect.

Five witnesses from the Giles Food Market robbery identified Lomax as the gunman and testified in court. That was the only case that went to trial. Prosecutors did not pursue other charges against Lomax, even though tests on the bullets linked all of the shootings.

Lomax had been in trouble with the law during his youth - from age 11, he had convictions for truancy, car theft, assault and robbery - but he maintains that he did not commit the burglaries, robberies and killings for which he was charged from July 1967 through December 1967.

During at least four of the six crimes, Lomax says, he was laid up in his sister's house, recuperating from injuries he suffered during a fight at a Thanksgiving Day dance Nov. 23, 1967.

Those injuries, Centurion Ministries argues, made it improbable that Lomax committed the crimes for which he was charged.

Stabbed in the hand

Lomax, then 20, had taken two younger sisters, Vivian and Audrey, to the dance at the YMCA on Druid Hill Avenue in West Baltimore. Lomax and his sisters lived on the east side.

When he thought a boy at the dance was bothering one of his sisters, a fight broke out. Lomax was beaten and stabbed in his right hand, which broke a bone and caused his hand to swell.

"It looked like a miniature boxing glove," Lomax recalls.

Court records show that doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital treated his hand that night and at least two other times before the Giles Food Market robbery.

Joseph Thomas, Lomax's lawyer, thought testimony from Hopkins physician Dr. Joseph U. Levi about Lomax's hand injury would prove that his client was incapable of committing any crimes.

But the jury deliberating the Giles Food Market case didn't buy it. They convicted him based on the testimony of employees and patrons in the grocery store.

"He couldn't even hold a pen when I saw him in jail," Thomas said. "I don't think he could have pulled the damn trigger."

Appeals of the case failed, and Lomax's sentence was sealed.

"I was pretty angry, confused, frustrated," said Lomax, now an inmate at the Maryland House of Correction, a maximum-security prison in Jessup. His right hand still appears slightly distorted from the 35-year-old injury. "None of this sunk in until I was in the penitentiary."

Turning around

It took a few years, said Lomax as he sat handcuffed at the prison during a recent interview, but he turned the anger into positive energy. He changed his middle name to "Mandela," to signify a wrongful imprisonment.

In May 1976, Lomax earned a Vocational Education Certificate in welding. Three years later, he earned his high school diploma. He gained continuing education credits from Anne Arundel Community College in 1983 and 1984 and an associate of arts degree from Essex Community College in 1986.

In 1988, Lomax landed a job with Advo Inc., a direct-mail company in Columbia.

"He was a great worker," said Bruce Quattrone, a former transportation manager for Advo and Lomax's supervisor. "Whatever you needed him to do, he did. I wrote a couple of letters for him when he was up for parole."

In 1989, the state parole commission for the first time recommended Lomax for parole. Then-Gov. William Donald Schaefer rejected the petition.

Lomax continued working with Advo, which had employed him for five years. He had a car and an apartment he used while he was on work-release. The prison system also granted him family leave for 48 hours a month.

In 1992, when the parole commission again reviewed Lomax for parole, his mother was hospitalized in a coma. Lomax's siblings said they hoped to revive her by whispering in her ear that Walter would soon be coming home.

"Walter's getting ready to come home," Audrey Brice said she would say to her dying mother. "We really thought he was coming out."

But Lomax didn't get the recommendation, though he continued to show an ability to function in society.

Lomax's mother died that year, never seeing her son reach freedom. The chances for his freedom diminished as time wore on.

The Division of Corrections shut down the prison work-release program in June 1993, after Rodney G. Stokes, a 40-year-old convicted murderer who was out on work release, walked into a construction trailer outside the Maryland Penitentiary, fatally shot his former girlfriend and then killed himself.

Commissioner of Correction Richard A. Lanham Sr. moved 134 lifers out of the work-release program, including Lomax.

Then in 1995, when Lomax received another recommendation for parole, Glendening announced a policy that would block any remaining hope for Lomax to see freedom.

In an announcement in September 1995, Glendening said he would refuse parole for all lifers during his term, except for the elderly and dying.

In 1998, when Lomax again faced the possibility of parole, he challenged Glendening's policy in the Maryland Court of Appeals, arguing that the governor must consider parole when an inmate is eligible. But Lomax lost that battle, too, with the court stating that the policy was within the governor's authority.

In 2000, Lomax received his third recommendation for parole, but Glendening blocked his release again.

'I wish them well'

The latest request rejected last week had asked the governor to commute Lomax's sentence, which would have removed him from lifer status and allowed the parole commission to re-enroll him in work-release.

If he had successfully completed the work-release program without infractions, he would have been eligible for release from prison in about three years.

But Glendening said he believes that the public wants to know that a person convicted of a life sentence will serve that time.

He said the state has elected a new governor and the legislature will have new leadership, so the issue will likely be debated again.

"I wish them well," Glendening said.

Meanwhile, Lomax vows to continue. "I've never stopped fighting," he said. "I'm not going to."