Florida Commission
Recommends Changes to
Lethal Injection Process

MARYLAND GOVERNORS CALL FOR ABOLITION OF DEATH PENALTY

Maryland Governor
Martin O’Malley

Notwithstanding the exe­cu­tions of the right­ly con­vict­ed, can the death penal­ty ever be jus­ti­fied as pub­lic pol­i­cy when it inher­ent­ly neces­si­tates the occa­sion­al tak­ing of wrong­ly con­vict­ed, inno­cent life? In Maryland, since 1978, we have exe­cut­ed five peo­ple and set one con­vict­ed man free when his inno­cence was dis­cov­ered. Are any of us will­ing to sac­ri­fice a mem­ber of our own fam­i­ly — wrong­ly con­vict­ed, sen­tenced and exe­cut­ed — in order to secure the exe­cu­tion of five right­ly con­vict­ed mur­ders? And even if we were, could that pub­lic pol­i­cy be called ​“just”? I do not believe it can.

…

And what of the tremen­dous cost of pur­su­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment? In 2002, Judge Dale Cathell of the Maryland Court of Appeals wrote that, accord­ing to his research, pro­cess­ing and impris­on­ing a death penal­ty defen­dant ​“costs $400,000 over and above … a pris­on­er serv­ing a life sen­tence.” Given that 56 peo­ple have been sen­tenced to death in Maryland since 1978, our state has spent about $22.4 mil­lion more than the cost of life impris­on­ment. That’s near­ly $4.5 mil­lion ​“extra” for each of the five exe­cu­tions car­ried out. And so long as every American is pre­sumed inno­cent until proven guilty, the cost of due process will not go down.

If, how­ev­er, we were to replace the death penal­ty with life with­out parole, that $22.4 mil­lion could pay for 500 addi­tion­al police offi­cers or pro­vide drug treat­ment for 10,000 of our addict­ed neigh­bors. Unlike the death penal­ty, these are invest­ments that save lives and pre­vent vio­lent crime. If we knew we could spare a mem­ber of our fam­i­ly from becom­ing a vic­tim of vio­lent crime by mak­ing this pol­i­cy change, would we do it?

…

Human dig­ni­ty is the con­cept that leads brave indi­vid­u­als to sac­ri­fice their lives for the lives of strangers. Human dig­ni­ty is the uni­ver­sal truth that is the basis of ethics. Human dig­ni­ty is the fun­da­men­tal belief on which the laws of this state and this repub­lic are found­ed. And absent a deter­rent val­ue, the dam­age done to the con­cept of human dig­ni­ty by our con­scious com­mu­nal use of the death penal­ty is greater than the ben­e­fit of even a just­ly drawn retribution.

(Washington Post, February 21, 2007).


Former Maryland Governor
Harry Hughes

Today, Maryland’s law­mak­ers face their own life-or-death deci­sion. I urge them to take the only log­i­cal path and put an end to Maryland’s sys­tem of capital punishment.

I stand with Gov. Martin O’Malley in say­ing it’s time to give up on this failed pol­i­cy. My opin­ion is that exe­cu­tions demean us as a soci­ety. I also join with the major­i­ty of Marylanders who believe that on a prac­ti­cal lev­el, the sys­tem is rife with prob­lems that can­not be solved.

…

The leg­is­la­tion pend­ing at the State House would replace the death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole, a harsh pun­ish­ment that would keep mur­der­ers off the street and keep us safe with­out undue bur­dens on law enforce­ment or vic­tims’ families.

…

Finally, and most impor­tant, we must acknowl­edge that in any human sys­tem there is room for error. Again and again, we hear about pris­on­ers freed from death row after being exon­er­at­ed of their alleged crimes — at least 123 across the coun­try in the past 34 years.

…

To those law­mak­ers who have sup­port­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the past, please con­sid­er all that we have learned in recent years about how dras­ti­cal­ly it fails in prac­tice. Around the coun­try, Americans are mov­ing away from the death penal­ty. A recent New Jersey com­mis­sion rec­om­mend­ed replac­ing the death penal­ty with life with­out parole because it sim­ply could not come up with a way to make the sys­tem work both fair­ly and effectively.

It’s time for Maryland to take heed and end cap­i­tal punishment here.

(Washington Post, February 18, 2007).

See Recent Legislative Activity.


Citation Guide