In a recent op-ed, for­mer Maryland Governor Parris Glendening crit­i­cized the ​“trou­bling” racial and geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties that plague the state’s death penal­ty. Glendening, who served as Governor from 1995 to 2003, com­mis­sioned a study of Maryland’s death penal­ty dur­ing his time in office and imple­ment­ed a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions dur­ing his sec­ond term to allow time for action to be tak­en to pre­vent these on-going prob­lems. He wrote:


In the eight years I served as gov­er­nor of Maryland, I found the pow­er to decide which con­demned pris­on­ers would live and which would die the most awe­some and emo­tion­al­ly gru­el­ing of all my duties. I faced this deci­sion four times.

I believed in the death penal­ty when I became gov­er­nor and took seri­ous­ly my con­sti­tu­tion­al respon­si­bil­i­ty to uphold Maryland law. I presided over two exe­cu­tions, those of Flint Gregory Hunt and Tyrone Gilliam. Both were black men whose vic­tims were white. I heard from many civ­il rights lead­ers who right­ly point­ed out that this racial com­bi­na­tion dom­i­nat­ed cas­es on our state’s death row, even though African Americans were and con­tin­ue to be the vic­tims in near­ly 80 per­cent of homicides.

So in 1999 I com­mis­sioned a study of race and death sen­tenc­ing from the University of Maryland, believ­ing it my respon­si­bil­i­ty to ensure that jus­tice was tru­ly blind when apply­ing this ultimate punishment.

A few months lat­er I faced yet anoth­er exe­cu­tion of a black man with a white vic­tim — that of Eugene Colvin-el. I was not yet con­vinced that a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions was nec­es­sary. But I was also not 100 per­cent cer­tain of Colvin-el’s guilt, so I com­mut­ed his death sen­tence to life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.

The last exe­cu­tion I faced was that of Wesley Baker — whom Maryland ulti­mate­ly exe­cut­ed on Dec. 5. His was the fourth case to come before me in which an African American man was con­demned to die for the mur­der of a white Marylander. And as with two of the three con­demned men before him, he had been sen­tenced to die in Baltimore County.

I could not, in good con­science, go for­ward with anoth­er exe­cu­tion of a black man for killing a white per­son. I stayed Baker’s exe­cu­tion in May 2002 and imposed a mora­to­ri­um on all exe­cu­tions pend­ing the results of the University of Maryland study.

Days before I left office in January 2003, the study was released. Examining the records of more than 1,300 death-penal­ty-eli­gi­ble cas­es between 1978 and 1999, crim­i­nol­o­gist Raymond Paternoster con­clud­ed that both geo­graph­ic and racial disparities existed.

Baltimore County was sin­gled out as hav­ing a sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er rate of death sen­tences than oth­er juris­dic­tions in the state. Murderers in Baltimore County were 26 times more like­ly to be sen­tenced to death than killers in Baltimore City and 14 times more like­ly than mur­der­ers in Montgomery County.

The sig­nif­i­cant racial dis­par­i­ties are trou­bling. Cases in which the vic­tim was white were almost twice as like­ly to result in the death penal­ty as cas­es in which the vic­tim was black, and blacks who killed whites were 2 1/​2 times more like­ly to be sen­tenced to death than whites who killed whites.

These results lead to the unfor­tu­nate con­clu­sion that we val­ue white life more than black life. Intentional or not — and I believe it is not — this is an inde­fen­si­ble and unten­able posi­tion for the state. Whether one sup­ports or oppos­es the death penal­ty in prin­ci­ple, all rea­son­able peo­ple under­stand that before we exer­cise the ulti­mate sanc­tion, we must be con­fi­dent that the sys­tem is, at a min­i­mum, fair and accurate.

The University of Maryland study received a great deal of atten­tion and should have been a call to action for state lead­ers, but no solu­tions have been imple­ment­ed. The General Assembly, despite con­duct­ing hear­ings on the issue, nev­er passed leg­is­la­tion to deal with the inequal­i­ties high­light­ed in the study.

Gov. Robert Ehrlich, who lift­ed my mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions after assum­ing office despite acknowl­edg­ing that race ​“plays a part all the way through the process,” named Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele as the new admin­is­tra­tion’s point man on the issue. The lieu­tenant gov­er­nor promised to con­duct an assess­ment of our state’s death penal­ty. To date, he has not.

Despite being ignored by the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion, issues raised by the study remain. Maryland still faces seri­ous ques­tions about the impact of race and geog­ra­phy in capital sentencing.

I imple­ment­ed the mora­to­ri­um to allow for the thor­ough and fair study of our death penal­ty sys­tem and to allow for action to be tak­en to pre­vent racial and geo­graph­ic dis­crim­i­na­tion. The study was com­plet­ed, but the cor­rec­tive action was not. It is time for our state to hon­est­ly and open­ly con­sid­er these find­ings and to find con­struc­tive reme­dies. To car­ry out exe­cu­tions under this sce­nario is simply wrong.

(Washington Post, December 18, 2005) (empha­sis added). See Race and New Voices.


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