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Thread: Maryland Capital Punishment News

  1. #11
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    Maryland death penalty protocols to be withdrawn

    The co-chair of a legislative panel reviewing Maryland’s death penalty protocols says proposed rules will be withdrawn due to the lack of availability of a drug used in lethal injections.

    Delegate Anne Healey, a Prince George’s Democrat, said Thursday that she was told by Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services Secretary Gary Maynard that he is withdrawing the protocols. She says that’s because changes in the protocols will be so substantive that the rules will have to be revised.

    The sole U.S. manufacturer of the lethal injection drug announced last month it is ending production because of death-penalty opposition overseas.

    A court ruling in 2006 requires approval of the protocols before an execution can take place in Maryland.


    http://thedailyrecord.com/2011/02/10...-be-withdrawn/

  2. #12
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    Death penalty moratorium leaves survivors, convicts in limbo

    The first time John Booth-El was sentenced to die, Phyllis Bricker drove to the Northwest Baltimore home where he had tied up and fatally stabbed her parents. She looked at an empty window, she said, "as if to say, It's all over. We got you justice."

    More than a quarter-century later, Booth-El is one of the longest-serving men on Maryland's small death row, and Bricker has grown weary of her battles, first with the court system and more recently with the state government.

    "There has been no closure, no justice," she said, her voice rising as she jabs the notepad in which she has tracked court and legislative hearings over the years.

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    "We're still here, and now we're fighting the legislature. Nobody ever told us we'd have to do that."

    Maryland is one of 35 states with a capital punishment law, has five men on death row and is prosecuting a half dozen new capital cases. But no one has been put to death in more than five years, and the slow writing and rewriting of execution protocols has imposed a de facto moratorium on capital punishment that appears unlikely to end anytime soon.

    Last week, state prison officials told lawmakers they need more time to work on the protocols — a task that so far has spanned the entire administration of Gov. Martin O'Malley, a death penalty opponent. The latest hangup: One of the chemicals used in lethal injections is no longer available in the United States.

    Death penalty opponents announced recently that they have found more legislative support than ever for repeal. Leaders in the General Assembly say the bill is not likely to pass this year, but a Senate made more liberal in last fall's election and a sympathetic governor have activists believing an end to capital punishment is on the horizon.

    O'Malley said the shortage of the chemical sodium thiopental "underscores what a laborious and complicated and time-consuming, resource-wasting legal process goes into carrying out the death penalty."

    "Our dollars are better spent on crime-fighting measures that we know work," the governor said in an interview last week. Still, he says he has no immediate plans to push for repeal, and won't follow the lead of former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, who in 2003 commuted to life sentences the state's entire death row.

    So Maryland will remain in the murky state of having capital punishment but not carrying it out, leaving victims' families and prosecutors frustrated.

    "We're in the worst possible place we could be," said Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler, a former chief prosecutor in Montgomery County who supports the death penalty. "We've set up a system of false promises for families of victims who are left wondering why it's not sought or why it's not carried out in the case of their loved one."

    Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott D. Shellenberger is pursuing capital charges in the murder-for-hire case of a woman accused of hiring a hit man to kill her husband at their Towson gas station last year. Shellenberger said he has to sit with victims "to explain the realities of the death penalty in Maryland."

    "I tell them it could be 15 years or much longer, and involve so many twists and turns that I can't even describe it now," he said. "A lot of them don't want to go through with it."

    The men on death row at a maximum-security prison in Western Maryland also remain in limbo.

    Heath Burch was sentenced in 1996 for killing his neighbors, a husband and wife, with a pair of scissors. His attorney says Burch is aware of the de facto moratorium, but says it doesn't alleviate any anxiety.

    "He knows well that it's subject to which way the political winds are blowing at any given time," attorney Michael E. Lawlor said. "At any given moment, new execution protocols could be adopted, and the state could seek to go forward in his case."

    Capital cases on docket

    Prosecutors have not abandoned capital punishment. The state is seeking death in six cases now pending.

    This month, new Prince George's County State's Attorney Angela D. Alsobrooks gave notice that she will try Darrell Lynn Bellard for capital murder. In that case, four people, two of them children, were shot to death in August in what appears to be a dispute over drug money.

    Alsobrooks said the victims' family was "very much on board" with her decision.

    "It's a heinous case," she said. "It's still the law in Maryland. I believe the death penalty is appropriate in some cases — certainly this one."

    Thomas Leggs Jr., charged in the Christmastime 2009 abduction, sexual assault and slaying of an 11-year-old Eastern Shore girl, could be the first person prosecuted under new restrictions approved in 2009.

    He is scheduled for trial in April. Last week, the Circuit Court judge hearing his case sanctioned the prosecutors' request to seek the death penalty.

    Bricker said she feels sorry for families just beginning their journey through the court system.

    "Just like us," she said, "they'll never find justice."

    She's saved notes and calendars over the years, keeping track of each of the dozens of court proceedings she and her husband, William Bricker, have attended.

    She reads from a timeworn police report. The case began at 4:08 p.m. on May 20, 1983, when her brother discovered the bodies of their elderly but healthy parents inside their home on Rockwood Avenue.

    Irvin and Rose Bronstein each had been bound and gagged and fatally stabbed. Their house was ransacked, their 1972 Chevrolet Impala missing.

    Police tracked the car to John Booth-El, who'd been living with his grandmother, two doors down from the Bronsteins. After killing the couple, police believe, he called two female friends to help him steal their televisions, jewelry and silverware.

    "If you see any dead bodies, pay them no mind," Booth-El told the women, one of them testified at trial.

    Three separate 12-member Baltimore City juries convicted Booth-El and sentenced him to die.

    Bricker says that at one point during the appeals process — capital convicts are afforded extra steps in the criminal justice process — Booth-El turned from the defense table to look at her.

    "See you next year," she remembered him saying.

    As she fought her way through the tangles of the criminal justice system, Bricker also began confronting a new obstacle: The state government.

    Governors step in

    In May 2002, Gov. Parris N. Glendening ordered a moratorium on the death penalty while the University of Maryland studied the way it had been applied in the state. The researchers found that capital punishment had been applied unevenly and inherently biased against black defendants.

    Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. lifted the moratorium soon after taking office in January 2003. Two men were executed under his watch; five men in total have been put to death in Maryland since a national ban on capital punishment ended in 1976.

    In December 2006, Maryland's highest court ruled that the state could not continue carrying out executions until it developed protocols for how the lethal injections were administered. By then O'Malley, a lifelong death penalty opponent, had been elected and was waiting to take office.

    After a push for repeal by death penalty opponents fell short in 2008, the legislature ordered another study, this time led by former U.S. Attorney General Benjamin R. Civiletti. The Civiletti commission found geographic and racial disparities in the way capital punishment is applied in Maryland, and recommended abolishing it.

    The next year, O'Malley spearheaded an impassioned effort for repeal. It ended in a compromise of sorts, with the closely divided Senate narrowing the cases in which a prosecutor can seek death to those with DNA evidence, a videotape of the crime or a videorecorded confession by the killer.

    The Brickers have traveled from their home in Pikesville to Annapolis several times over the years.

    Phyllis Bricker's voice ticks up an octave as she reviews the yellowed pages of Booth-El's lengthy criminal record of assaults, robberies and prison escapes — all before he was arrested for killing her parents.

    "This is the kind of man they're fighting so hard to save, she said. "They are so worried about him. I will never understand it."

    William Bricker served in World War II and worked for 44 years as a television engineer.

    "I have given so much," he said. "What has this guy ever given us?"

    The lawmakers who want to repeal the death penalty "didn't sit in the courtroom with us," Bricker said. "They didn't hear one word of evidence. They don't know anything."

    The governor says the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime. He points to the state's record drop in violence over the past four years, a time in which no executions have been carried out.

    "You cannot drive out darkness with darkness, hate with hate," O'Malley said.

    Jane Henderson, director of Maryland Citizens Against State Executions, called the state's approach to capital punishment "a complicated quagmire," from which state lawmakers and residents are increasingly turning away.

    What Marylanders think

    A survey of Marylanders last month found that 56 percent favored the death penalty and 26 percent oppose it.

    But 60 percent of the 802 respondents told Annapolis-based Gonzales Research and Marketing Strategies that life without the possibility of parole, a sentencing option in Maryland, is an acceptable alternative to capital punishment.

    This year, 82 of the state's 188 lawmakers have signed on as co-sponsors of legislation to repeal capital punishment — a record, according to advocates.

    But with the General Assembly focused on resolving a $1.6 billion budget deficit, and also taking up same-sex marriage and medical marijuana, House and Senate leaders say they are unlikely to devote precious debate time to the death penalty this year.

    More than 3,000 convicts are on death rows nationwide, according to the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center. The center found that 112 new death sentences were handed down last year, and a dozen states executed a total of 46 convicts.

    Many states that have a death penalty statute carry it out sparingly, or not at all. More than 200 convicts are on death row in neighboring Pennsylvania, which hasn't executed anyone in more than a decade.

    In Maryland and elsewhere, the latest bureaucratic hurdle is the nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental, the first of the three-drug combination most states use for lethal injection. The company that produced the anesthetic announced last month that it would stop making it.

    Thirteen states have asked the Department of Justice for help in securing a suitable drug for lethal injection. Maryland was not among them.

    "It's a bit of a mess," said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which takes no formal position on the death penalty, but has reported on what it says are flaws in its application. "But it's a solvable problem. It's not the end of the death penalty."

    Still, he said, "it's one more delay and uncertainty for the public, who are frustrated with the fact that there's always something."

    Oklahoma, which pioneered the use of sodium thiopental, has switched to pentobarbital, which it has used in three executions since December, Dieter said. Ohio officials said they have enough sodium thiopental for an execution scheduled this month, but they then plan to switch to pentobarbital, he said.

    The sodium thiopental shortage prompted Maryland's Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services to withdraw its draft execution protocols from a long-awaited legislative review that had been scheduled for this week.

    Sen. Paul Pinsky, a death penalty opponent and co-chairman of the panel of lawmakers charged with reviewing the procedure, said the delay does not trouble him.

    "This is all sort of emblematic of the stops and starts with the death penalty," the Prince George's County Democrat said. "There's general ambivalence from the public. It's not like I've gotten hundreds of calls from people complaining that we're not moving quickly enough.

    "Overall, the rush to execute is slowing down."

    Prison officials do not apologize for the time it has taken to write the protocols.

    "The regulatory process is a long one," corrections spokesman Rick Binetti said. He said the department is examining what other states are doing.

    "It's a serious issue, and the department needs to do its due diligence."

    http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/mar...576,full.story

  3. #13
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    Md. Assembly will not debate death penalty this year

    The Maryland General Assembly is not likely to take up legislation this year on abolishing the state’s death penalty, Delegate Sandy Rosenberg, a Democrat and one of the bill’s 61 cosponsors, said Tuesday.

    Mr. Rosenberg, Baltimore Democrat, said the bill has significant support from Democratic legislators, but time is expiring in this Assembly session.

    The legislation was to end capital punishment, three years after a state-appointed commission recommended a ban due to the system’s perceived racial bias and excessive costs.

    Mr. Rosenberg, one of 61 sponsors on the House bill. He said he is confident the bill has would have had majority support in the House and Senate.

    The Assembly is scheduled to end its 90-day legislative session April 11.

    “We’re working for next year,” Mr. Rosenberg said hours before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the bill. “We’re trying to educate members and increase our numbers in the House.”

    Maryland has executed just five criminals since 1976, and none since 2005. The state currently has five inmates on death row.

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...-penalty-year/

  4. #14
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    Maryland's top court to take look at state's new death penalty law

    Maryland's highest court is scheduled to take its first look at the state's new death penalty law Friday, when lawyers for a prisoner accused of murdering a correctional officer argue that prosecutors should have to convince a judge that they have the evidence now required for a capital case.

    The controversial 2009 changes to the death penalty law restrict prosecutors' authority to seek execution for first-degree murder convictions only in crimes in which there is DNA or other biological evidence, a videotaped confession or a video recording of the crime.

    Lawyers for Lee Edward Stephens, 31, said Anne Arundel County prosecutors indicated that biological or DNA evidence ties Stephens to the July 2006 fatal stabbing of David McGuinn.

    McGuinn was a 42-year-old correctional officer at the Maryland House of Correction, where Stephens and co-defendant Lamar Cornelius Harris, 41, were then serving life sentences. The prison has since been closed.

    Stephens' lawyers asked Anne Arundel County Circuit Court Judge Paul A. Hackner to hold a hearing to determine if prosecutors have the evidence that could tie Stephens to McGuinn's killing — enough evidence to go forward with what is expected to be a 10-week capital murder trial. Hackner agreed with prosecutors who opposed the hearing. Stephens appealed.

    Arguments Friday at the Court of Appeals are expected to last at least an hour. There is no deadline for that court to rule.

    Stephens' attorneys said that 40 other men, not charged, were at the bloody crime scene, and five would testify that they had the victim's blood on them or in their cells or had stepped in it. The attorneys are arguing that because it's possible for there to be a case in which there is relevant DNA evidence, but that evidence does not link a defendant to murder, a pretrial ruling on whether Stephens is eligible for a death sentence is needed.

    More than four years after McGuinn was killed, Harris has not been tried either. A psychiatrist has said he is mentally unfit to stand trial, but the court hearing to assess that is tied up in a pretrial appeal pending at the Court of Appeals as well. At issue is what evidence could be used in a hearing where Hackner would rule on whether Harris is competent for trial.

    http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/mar...,1960049.story

  5. #15
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    By 6-1 vote, Court of Appeals OKs juror anonymity in criminal trials

    Maryland will allow anonymous juries starting Sept. 1, after the Court of Appeals voted 6-1 Monday to permit them in criminal trials when a judge believes juror safety, harassment or tampering is a concern.

    The judges said juror anonymity should be a rare exception. The new rules call for all jurors to be referred to by number, not name. They allow a judge to determine if there is a reason in each case to protect the identity of jurors.

    Chief Judge Robert M. Bell, the lone dissenter, said he had a philosophical problem with it.

    "I just cannot get my arms around an anonymous jury, especially in a death penalty case," he said before voting. The issue, he said, was juror responsibility.

    Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott D. Shellenberger supported the decision.

    "We think this is a very necessary and effective tool in the day and age of gangs and violence," he said.

    He pointed to the case of Patrick Byers Jr., who was sentenced to life in prison for ordering from his prison cell the 2007 killing of a witness in a separate murder case. That trial was in federal court, and jurors were not identified.

    Howard County State's Attorney Dario Broccolino said he supported the decision.

    "I think it is a tool that can be used, that may be necessarily used in rare instances," Broccolino said Monday.

    Broccolino said he couldn't recall a recent case in Howard County where keeping jurors anonymous would have affected a verdict.

    "I don't think we've come to that point in Howard County ... where we would have wanted that or needed that," Broccolino said. "But increasingly with gangs and the violence associated with them, I could see it would be necessary sometimes and we would move for it. Judges are going to be instructed to use it very carefully were it would be the exception rather than the rule."

    http://articles.baltimoresun.com/201...s-juror-safety

  6. #16
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    Death Row in the Free State

    In the aftermath of the controversial execution of convicted murderer Troy Davis by the state of Georgia, City Paper wondered about the fate of Maryland’s own death row inmates.

    Today, there are five men on death row, incarcerated in the North Branch Correctional Institution in Cumberland: Heath Burch (Prince George’s County, convicted in 1996), Jody Miles (Wicomico County, convicted in 1998), and three men convicted in 1984: Anthony Grandison, Vernon Evans Jr, (both Baltimore County), and John Booth (Baltimore City). Yet their executions may not be carried out for years to come, due to a combination of moratoriums and legal proceedings.

    In 2002, then Gov. Parris Glendening (D) placed a moratorium on executions in Maryland until a state-mandated study of capital punishment could be completed. The study found that the death penalty unfairly targeted specific groups, dependent upon race and geographic location. Nonetheless, the moratorium was lifted in 2003, and Wesley Baker died by lethal injection in December 2005, the last Marylander executed by the state to date. (Then-Gov. Robert Ehrlich, Glendening’s Republican successor, denied Baker clemency.) In 2006, a death warrant was signed for Vernon Evans, who had been sentenced to die in 1984. Evans’ attorneys appealed his sentence, arguing that the jury did not hear about the possible extenuating circumstance of his troubled childhood, and also contested the method of lethal injection, contending that the protocol did not meet the state’s Administrative Procedure Act. The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled in Evans’ favor, instigating a de facto moratorium until the execution guidelines could be rewritten. According to Danielle Lueking, a spokesperson for the state attorney general’s office, those guidelines are still being rewritten today.

    Meanwhile, Maryland’s death row inmates remain on death row. “Just because there is a de facto moratorium does not mean their sentences are changed,” Lueking notes. The Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment, convened in 2008, opposed the repeal of the death penalty, citing it as a deterrent for crime. The moratorium still stands thanks to the Evans appeal, but executions could begin again when the state approves new lethal-injection protocols.

    http://citypaper.com/news/death-row-...tate-1.1209513

  7. #17
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    O'Malley spokeswoman says governor not likely to end death penalty funding

    Gov. Martin O'Malley held a July meeting with two lawmakers and a death penalty opponent to discuss the possibility of ending funding for executions in the budget for the next fiscal year.

    Raquel Guillory, a spokeswoman for O'Malley, said Tuesday that it's not likely the governor will follow through with the idea, but she said a final decision has not been made.

    Raquel Guillory, a spokeswoman for O'Malley, said Tuesday that it's not likely the governor will follow through with the idea, but she said a final decision has not been made.

    O'Malley scheduling records indicate the July 22 meeting was requested by Delegate Samuel Rosenberg, a Baltimore Democrat who has sponsored legislation to end capital punishment in Maryland.

    Rosenberg confirmed the meeting Tuesday. The records indicate Sen. Lisa Gladden, a Baltimore Democrat who also opposes the death penalty, attended the meeting along with Jane Henderson, executive director of Maryland Citizens Against State Executions. Rosenberg confirmed they attended as well.

    http://www.therepublic.com/view/stor...alty-Maryland/

  8. #18
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    Maryland’s death penalty comes under fire

    A Maryland delegate will push to abolish the state’s death penalty during the upcoming General Assembly, and the NAACP is expected to throw its support behind the proposal Tuesday.

    Delegate Samuel I. Rosenberg, Baltimore Democrat, said Monday he will introduce a bill to make Maryland the 17th state to outlaw capital punishment. He sponsored similar legislation last year that stalled in a House committee.

    Some Maryland lawmakers and civil rights groups have in recent years called for an end to the death penalty, arguing it is applied more frequently to blacks than whites, costs more to prosecute than standard murder trials, and leaves open the possibility of wrongful executions.

    While a 2009 state law made it significantly harder for prosecutors to pursue the death penalty, Mr. Rosenberg said the system should be eliminated entirely to prevent any future mistakes.

    “It’s a system that can’t be made to work,” he said. “You can tinker with it all you want.”

    Maryland currently has five convicts on death row and has not executed a person since 2005. The state has executed five people since 1976, tied for the 22nd most of any state.

    Texas has executed the most convicts during that span with 477, while Virginia is second at 109. The death penalty has been abolished in 16 states and the District.

    Opposition to Maryland’s death penalty has increased since 2002, when then-Gov. Parris N. Glendening, a Democrat, ordered a moratorium to allow for study into the system’s possible racial bias.

    Then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a Republican, lifted the ban in 2004 and allowed two executions, but the state Court of Appeals imposed a new moratorium in 2006 after ruling the state’s regulations on lethal injections were outdated.

    A state-appointed committee then recommended in 2008 that Maryland abolish the death penalty because of evidence of racial and socioeconomic disparities, high legal costs, and emotional stress on victims’ families caused by lengthy appeals processes.

    A 2009 bill to ban capital punishment was rejected by the state Senate, but legislators passed a compromise that allows prosecutors to seek the death penalty only in first-degree murder cases in which there is biological or DNA evidence, a videotaped confession or conclusive video evidence.

    Anne Arundel County prosecutors will pursue the death penalty in this month’s trial against Lee Edwards Stephens, who is accused of killing a correctional officer in 2006 as a prison inmate. A judge ruled in September that the case could go forward as a capital punishment case.

    Montgomery County prosecutors have also not ruled out seeking the death penalty against Curtis M. Lopez, who is accused of killing a Germantown woman and her 11-year-old son in October.

    Most opponents of repealing the death penalty have argued that capital punishment should still be an option in the most heinous cases. Others have said that the 2009 law has effectively banned the practice in all but the most obvious trials, making any further legislation moot.

    Mr. Rosenberg thinks there is majority support for a ban in both chambers, but that the 11-member Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee is still on the fence about the bill.

    The Associated Press reported last month that Mr. Rosenberg met last summer with Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat, to discuss the possibility of avoiding the legislative process and effectively barring executions by refusing to fund them in the state budget.

    A representative for Mr. O’Malley, who has long favored abolishing the death penalty, has said he is unlikely to do that.

    The Maryland State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will announce Tuesday in Annapolis that it wants lawmakers to ban the death penalty.

    “To execute an innocent man is just a travesty and inhumane,” said state NAACP chapter president Gerald Stansbury. “I believe that the mood is there, but now is the time for [lawmakers] to stand up.”

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...r-fire/?page=2

  9. #19
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    The state's death penalty has been at issue in the General Assembly for years. The proposed repeal has pitted party members against each other, preventing a full body vote.

    Last month, as the General Assembly was preparing to reconvene, the NAACP pushed for an abolishment of the death penalty, highlighting racial disparities and systematic flaws associated with the history of capital punishment in Maryland.

    Democratic Governor Martin O'Malley sought to end the death penalty in 2009 and has supported any legislative efforts ever since.

    Republican Delegate Pat McDonough says the punishment is justified in certain circumstances, "what do you do if somebody walks into a school and kills four or five young children, what do you do? Give them life without parole?"

    Although there has been a steady push for the repeal in the last decade, opposed Delegates are holding their ground. Many unwavering in the notion that the proposed legislation is simply a tool for 'criminal advocacy,' not an evolvement of effective punishment and the justice system.

    "These people come back every year, protecting criminals and murderers, trying to repeal the death penalty," McDonough said.

    According to McDonough, a referendum on the repeal of the death penalty has yet to be ruled out in the 'kingdom of referendums,' as he puts it.

    http://wmal.com/Article.asp?id=2405075

  10. #20
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    Maryland’s broken death penalty

    ON PAPER, Maryland courts are empowered to impose the death penalty in certain murder cases. In practice, the state’s death penalty is in remission. Five convicts remain on death row, and defendants can be prosecuted for capital murder and sentenced to death, but the state lacks any legal method of carrying out executions. No one has been put to death in Maryland since 2005.

    That status quo seems acceptable to the power brokers in Annapolis, who would rather not add to a list of controversies that now includes legalizing same-sex marriage and subsidizing higher education for illegal immigrants.

    But by ducking the issue, they are leaving in place a costly, inefficient, unjust and dysfunctional system that exacts a terrible toll on the families of murder victims. Rather than legislating and leading, state lawmakers are in denial.

    Three years ago, an effort to abolish the death penalty narrowly failed in the General Assembly, which instead restricted it to cases where there is DNA evidence, a videotaped confession or video linking the suspect to a murder. But the legislature’s reform fixed nothing; if anything, it codified a system even more arbitrary than the one it replaced. Now the nature of the evidence, rather than the barbarity of the crime, is the critical factor. So a murder conviction based on DNA evidence might result in a death sentence, but not a Virginia Tech-style killing spree whose perpetrator is identified by multiple witnesses.

    Nor did the changes in the Maryland law address the racial and jurisdictional disparities in the death penalty’s application. And there is no evidence that the death penalty is more effective at deterring murders than is a sentence of life without parole.

    The broken system is particularly burdensome for the families of murder victims, who face years, even decades, of litigation. Three of the state’s five death-row prisoners were sentenced nearly 30 years ago; the others were sentenced in the mid-1990s.

    Whatever moral convictions one holds about capital punishment — and we think it is wrong — Maryland has failed to find an evenhanded, just and fair-minded way to apply it. As a recent report by some of Maryland’s most prominent attorneys concluded, the state’s current law “is likely to increase the arbitrariness of the imposition of the death penalty because persons who commit the most heinous crimes — the ‘worst of the worst’ — are not necessarily the same people who will be eligible for the death penalty.”

    A majority of the Maryland General Assembly favors an end to capital punishment in the state. Still, legislative leaders are reluctant to allow consideration of a bill that would repeal the death penalty and shift the anticipated savings in the state budget to programs to benefit victims’ families. The leaders would rather leave in place a system that is a disgrace to justice, and to Maryland.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...hvR_story.html

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