Vernon Lee Cowan, a Maryland prison inmate, has had 30 more years added to his sentence for killing his cellmate in maximum-security North Branch Correctional Institute near Cumberland. Cowan, 44, was sentenced to second-degree murder after pleading guilty in Allegany County Circuit Court. In February 2013 he had been charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of Ricky Bailey, 51, who died of blunt force injuries and wounds from a razor blade. Prosecutor’s claim Cowan killed Bailey because he wanted a single cell, after the two were recently assigned cellmates. Cowan was serving a 60-year sentence for killing his girlfriend, Whitney Bass, in Waterbury, Connecticut in 2008. He was transferred to Maryland under an interstate prisoner agreement. Bailey was serving a life sentence for a Baltimore County rape.
