The Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment began hear­ing tes­ti­mo­ny from a wide vari­ety of wit­ness­es on issues relat­ed to the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem. After gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion regard­ing mat­ters such as pos­si­ble racial, geo­graph­ic and socioe­co­nom­ic dis­par­i­ties, on costs, and on the risks of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent, the 23-mem­ber Commission will offer rec­om­men­da­tions to the General Assembly to ensure that Maryland’s use of the death penal­ty is ​“free from bias and error” and achieves ​“fair­ness and accu­ra­cy.”

Among those who spoke to the Commission on the first day of tes­ti­mo­ny on July 29 were two men whose broth­ers had com­mit­ted mur­der. One was sen­tenced to death, the oth­er to life, though look­ing at the crimes and the mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances it would have been very dif­fi­cult to pre­dict the out­comes.

The sec­ond hear­ing on August 6 also focused on the arbi­trari­ness of the death penal­ty. Defense attor­ney Harry Trainor tes­ti­fied, ​“There will always be an error rate, because this isn’t a sys­tem that’s run by infal­li­ble human beings, and it’s impos­si­ble in the long run to run a sys­tem like this with­out mak­ing seri­ous mis­takes.

The next hear­ing will be held on August 19 and will look at the lengthy time each cap­i­tal case takes and the cost com­par­isons of the death penal­ty to alter­na­tive sen­tences. The fourth hear­ing will be on September 5 and will include tes­ti­mo­ny on the risk of exe­cut­ing inno­cent peo­ple. The Commission is sched­uled to issue its rec­om­men­da­tions to the Maryland General Assembly by December 15.
(J. McMenamin, ​“First death penal­ty hear­ing held,” Baltimore Sun, July 29, 2008; Associated Press, ​“Panel hears case for, against death penal­ty,” Baltimore Sun, August 6, 2008). See Arbitrariness and Studies.

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