Chris McBride was sentenced to life for murder. Would a Maryland law give him a second chance?

Maryland lawmakers last year passed a hotly debated bill allowing some people who’ve served significant time for crimes they committed when they were young to have their sentences reconsidered.

Chris McBride wanted to be among the first people in prison to have their case reviewed.

More than three decades ago, a Frederick County jury found McBride guilty of first-degree murder after he stabbed a man to death when he was 23. A judge sentenced him to life in prison.

McBride, now 56, believes he has demonstrated remorse and changed. But would a judge agree?

A promising start

He grew up a world away from his prison in Western Maryland.

The youngest of three siblings, McBride was raised in a middle-class, devout Catholic household in Prince George’s County. At Holy Family in Hillcrest Heights, he served as an altar boy.

But his father, Charles, was later diagnosed with kidney failure, and his mother, Valeria, lost her job as a bank teller. They eventually separated.

His parents’ misfortunes didn’t stop him from going to college. McBride enrolled at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore before transferring to Syracuse University. He left after accidentally dropping a class he needed to keep a Pell Grant.

He resumed his studies closer to home at the University of Maryland, College Park. Then his mother died of an epileptic seizure, and McBride took a leave of absence to grieve. When he returned to school, he was academically dismissed for not registering in time for classes.

McBride planned to go back to college once his financial situation stabilized. In the meantime, he turned to selling drugs.

That’s how he met Carl Mantack, another drug dealer to whom he would come to owe about $1,000.

Mantack came to collect in the fall of 1993, beating him, humiliating him and threatening to harm his family, McBride later testified.

On Nov. 17, 1993, Mantack showed up unannounced at McBride’s home with a knife. McBride believed he was in a “kill-or-be-killed situation,” he later told a jury.

McBride grabbed his own knife and chased Mantack down the street into a nearby home because, he said in an interview, the threat was still imminent. He broke into the house, where he stabbed Mantack dozens of times and twice slit his throat.

Meanwhile, one of his sisters, Zenobia McBride, came home from her shift with the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington and heard her brother had been arrested.

“It was, to this day, the most devastating thing I have ever experienced,” she said. “I just couldn’t believe it.”

Yet she had worried he’d been on the wrong path before the killing. In one instance, he told her he was working a landscaping job in Frederick. But when she checked, she found him standing on a corner. She suspected he was dealing drugs.

Still, she never thought she’d see him on the front page of The News, a daily Frederick newspaper, covered in blood and accused of murder.

A bid for freedom

After he was sentenced, McBride convinced himself he would never leave prison. Removing any hope lessened the sting.

Still, he worked to better himself. He converted to Islam and mentored fellow prisoners who shared his faith. He worked his way up to a senior position at the metal shop at the Maryland Correctional Institution in Hagerstown.

In 2020, McBride sought parole but wasn’t successful.

Five years later, while McBride was waiting to hear about his latest bid for parole, the Maryland General Assembly voted to give people like him a path to freedom.

Lawmakers passed the Maryland Second Look Act, which allows certain people who were at least 18 but younger than 25 when they committed their crimes and have served at least 20 years in prison to seek reduced sentences.

The law is “not a get-out-of-jail-free card,” Del. Cheryl Pasteur, a Democrat from Baltimore County, said at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee in 2025. “If we trust the courts to sentence, trust them to review these cases.”

Bill opponents included crime victims’ family members, victims’ rights advocates and the Maryland State’s Attorneys’ Association.

“I have not seen the legislature that is so focused on letting convicted murderers have so many opportunities to have their sentences reconsidered and to drag victims’ families back to court time after time to share their painful memories and their most painful loss,” Joanna Mupanduki, deputy executive director of Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center, said at the hearing.

But the measure passed.

Scientific research suggests young people’s brains are still developing. So advocates have been pushing for states to pass laws allowing those like McBride to seek reconsideration.

In Maryland, that applies to more than 650 people, according to a nonpartisan analysis of the bill. McBride’s attorneys filed his reconsideration petition the day the act took effect.

A sentence reconsidered

Hours before he returned to court, McBride was racked with anxiety and couldn’t sleep or eat.

Correctional officers handcuffed, shackled and loaded him into a van on Jan. 21 for the 40-minute trip to the Frederick County Courthouse — the same place where he had been sentenced to life in prison. He wore his light-blue prison-issued shirt, dark jeans and white sneakers.

“This could be it,” McBride thought. He was nervous but tried to stay positive.

One of his attorneys, James Johnston, told the judge that McBride had changed for the better after more than three decades in prison.

“Mr. McBride, your honor, has accepted responsibility. He’s demonstrated remorse. His conduct suggests that he can be safely maintained in the community,” Johnston said.

Johnston noted that McBride had many relatives and friends in the courtroom and said he had not gotten in trouble in prison in more than 27 years.

Later, Zenobia McBride testified her brother was worthy of redemption and had so much more to offer to his family, friends and society.

Prosecutors were largely unmoved.

Frederick County Deputy State’s Attorney Joyce King acknowledged his family support and the “extraordinary job” he’d done in prison.

But King said she had a duty to public safety and the victim. The Mantack family did not attend the hearing, and The Banner’s attempts to reach them about the case were unsuccessful.

There was no reason for the courts to intervene when the parole commission had not issued its decision, King argued.

“This is a brutal homicide,” King said. “The state would argue he’s still a risk.”

After the lawyers spoke, McBride directly addressed the judge.

“What I did is the very definition of irreparable,” he said.

He initially felt sorry after the crime but also incredulous that no one saw him as a victim, he said. Later, he felt appalled and nauseated by what he had done.

“My sentence was a deliberate, thoughtful, calculated approach,” McBride said. “I was determined to complete it without incident. I was determined to complete it without added insult to injury.”

Frederick County Circuit Judge Scott Rolle interjected.

“So what’s the plan? What is your plan? How do you see your life?”

McBride said he wanted to be there for his family and go into the welding or electrical trade.

“From a self-interested, or a pragmatic standpoint, with all due respect, prison sucks,” he said. “And I don’t plan on coming back.”

Rolle pressed McBride to think more about the larger implications of his potential release.

“When you eventually get released, if you screw up, there’s a lot of people who are going to be upset at you. It’s not just you that you have to work for, it’s them,” Rolle said. “Are you prepared for that responsibility?”

“Yes,” McBride replied, “I relish it.”

A new judgment

On March 13, Zenobia McBride received word from her brother’s legal team: The judge had agreed to reduce his sentence. She immediately fired off a message to him.

When McBride learned his sister was trying to reach him, he called her. She then read him a portion of the decision.

He thought he had lost because, to him, the wording made it seem like the judge “shot me down.”

No, his sister told him, “just pack your bags — you’re coming home.”

On April 7, Rolle officially resentenced McBride to time served plus five years’ supervised probation. He would go home that day.

“Don’t be the one that blows this for everybody else, you understand what I’m saying?” Rolle told McBride. “It’s a lot of responsibility for you, because you have to show that my judgment was well-placed, and you have to show that the legislature’s judgment was well-placed.”

When the hearing adjourned, people in the courtroom applauded.

Rolle stepped down from the bench and shook McBride’s hand. The judge and the defendant then embraced.