On March 15, the Maryland House of Delegates passed (82 – 56) a bill to abol­ish the death penal­ty for future crimes. The same bill passed the Maryland Senate on March 6. Governor Martin O’Malley has pledged to sign the bill, which will make Maryland the 18th state to abol­ish the death penal­ty, and the sixth to do so in the last six years. O’Malley said, ​“I’ve felt com­pelled to do every­thing I could to change our law, repeal the death penal­ty, so that we could focus on doing the things that actu­al­ly work to reduce vio­lent crime.” Maryland cur­rent­ly has five peo­ple on death row, but they will not be affect­ed by the leg­is­la­tion. Prior to 2007, no leg­is­la­ture had abol­ished the death penal­ty since the 1960s. The oth­er 5 states to recent­ly abol­ish the death penal­ty are New Jersey, New York, New Mexico, Illinois and Connecticut.

(DPIC post­ed, March 15, 2013; J. Wagner, ​“Md. General Assembly Repeals Death Penalty,” Wash. Post, Mar. 15, 2013). See DPIC’s Press Release. See Recent Legislative Activity and Maryland. A time­line of Maryland’s death penal­ty and more infor­ma­tion on recent nation­al trends is avail­able at Death Penalty at a Glance. Photo by @bpsears.

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