BALTIMORE — Baltimore prosecutors sought a judge to ensure a convicted murderer is never a free man again.
Reginald Lively, 68, offered no apology and no statement at sentencing. The judge focused on how the victim suffered 88 stab wounds and was hit eight times, calling this “excessive, more than reckless and rather gross and perverse” before sentencing Lively to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“This is a serial killer, and this gentleman needs to be off the streets,” Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates told WBAL-TV 11 News Investigates.
“Enough is enough. How many people are we going to put at risk for this defendant to live in a free society?” Kurt Bjorklund, the chief of the prosecutor’s Cold Case Unit.
Lively’s conviction in the killing of John Hall III, 68, marked his third murder conviction. Prior to this case, Lively pleaded guilty in a couple of domestic violence killings. He served eight years of a 20-year prison sentence for killing a woman in 1985, and he pleaded guilty to the death of another woman in North Carolina in 2000, for which he received a 30-year sentence and got paroled after serving about 12 years.
In Hall’s case, police found the victim’s body on May 28, 2021, inside his apartment on Clark’s Lane in Northwest Baltimore. He was covered with a blanket after he was repeatedly stabbed and beaten.