Death penalty debate reignites in Md.
In the late 1980s, John Groncki was working as a Baltimore City police officer in the K-9 unit when he came upon four people he believed had just committed an armed robbery.
He followed standard procedure and searched all four men for weapons. Finding none, he continued to follow protocol and called for a transport, which is when the men were searched again.
"I was standing there on the side when all of the suspects were being searched and the one individual was hiding a gun in his crotch area," Groncki said. "The little hairs on the back of my neck started going up when he pulled that gun out of the suspect's pants."
Groncki said he wasn't happy he had missed the gun, but thanked the alleged robber for not killing him.
"He said, 'I ain't going to death row,' " Groncki recalled. "I think that absolutely prohibited him from using that gun on me -- he simply didn't want to go to death row."
While the death penalty may have scared the criminal enough to save Groncki's life, whether or not the death penalty is a deterrent has fueled debates for years in statehouses throughout the United States, and Maryland is no exception.
Maryland is one of the 34 states with the death penalty, and legislators have brought it up for debate each year since 2006. Even though a compromise was approved in 2009, there has been a push to abolish the death penalty every year since, and this year, 66 delegates and 19 senators are sponsoring legislation to repeal the death penalty.
If the legislation is passed and receives the signature of Gov. Martin O'Malley, it would void the 2009 compromise that requires Maryland prosecutors to not only prove first-degree murder was committed as well as an aggravating crime such as rape or robbery, but state's attorneys would also have to provide DNA evidence, video of the alleged crime or a voluntary, videotaped confession.
While the 2009 measure was intended to keep the death penalty an option for prosecutors handling capital crimes and ensure no innocent people would be put to death by the state of Maryland, Delegate Rudolph Cane, D-37A-Wicomico, said the state should not be in the business of death.
"I've had the misfortune or fortune, depending on how you look at it, to meet one of my citizens, Kirk Bloodsworth, who was given the death penalty and later they found he wasn't guilty," said Cane, who is a co-sponsor of this year's bill to abolish the death penalty. "I'm a believer the state should not be in the business of killing and then say 'Oops I made a mistake.' So what can we do to correct it?"
Bloodsworth was charged with sexual assault, rape and first-degree murder in 1984 after a 9-year-old girl was found strangled, raped and beaten with a rock. The next years he was found guilty at trial and later sentenced to death.
Then, in 1993, he became the first person to be exonerated from death row with DNA evidence. He had spent eight years in prison for a crime he didn't commit and if not for DNA evidence would have been wrongfully executed by the state. The real criminal was later found, according to The Innocence Project.
"It would be better not to have the death penalty," Cane said. "I don't think we can afford to make mistakes and find out after the fact we killed the wrong person."
Other legislators throughout the Lower Shore as well as Wicomico County State's Attorney Matt Maciarello don't agree and say the death penalty can be a useful tool.
"The biggest problem for us in Maryland if it's taken away is the only charge you have left at the top is life without parole," said Delegate Mike McDermott, R-38B-Worcester. "When you start negotiating with someone over a heinous crime and your start is the death penalty, then life without parole can look pretty good."
If the legislation is passed, some of the elected officials from the Lower Shore, including Senators Richard Colburn, R-37-Dorchester, and Jim Mathias, D-38-Worcester, and Delegate Charles Otto, R-38A-Somerset, fear there would no longer be a strong deterrent in place to prevent people from committing murder.
Mathias said ultimately people are responsible for their actions.
"I believe in a society most people are good, but I think, unfortunately, we have to have these laws because some people aren't," he said. "They need to be enforceable and they need to evolve as we go along."
Since the compromise in 2009, there have been five cases throughout Maryland in which prosecutors have given notice they intend to seek the death penalty and one case in which that notification is pending. There are five inmates on death row now, and no executions have been performed in the state since that time.
The cost of maintaining those five inmates was reduced in June 2010 when the Department of Corrections transferred them from the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center to the North Branch Correctional Institute. Following the move, the DOC said the cost of maintaining a death row inmate became similar to that of a maximum security inmate.
Because three of the five inmates have been in prison for more than 26 years, replacing the death penalty with life without parole isn't likely to have any impact on the budget of the DOC, according to a report from the Department of Legislative Services.
Even given the relatively minor financial change, Maciarello said he would like to continue having the death penalty as an option.
"If someone is already serving two life sentences without parole, there should be an ultimate punishment for a criminal that commits murder while he or she is in the custody of our state," said Maciarello, who said victims' families should have some voice in the process. "The reality is that there is no political will to carry out the death penalty. We have family members of victims who have long passed, yet their killer lives on for decades."
http://www.delmarvanow.com/article/2...WS01/203180302
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