Michael May served as a Baltimore City police offi­cer and as a mil­i­tary police offi­cer. He for­mer­ly sup­port­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, but changed his stance upon learn­ing of inno­cent peo­ple who had been sen­tenced to death. Mr. May tes­ti­fied ear­li­er this yar before the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment. He recent­ly pub­lished an op-ed in the Baltimore Examiner explain­ing how his views changed and why he sup­ports for repeal of Maryland’s death penal­ty. The full op-ed appears below:

Time to end the death penal­ty in Maryland
By Michael May

I spent 10 years as a law enforce­ment offi­cer, includ­ing sev­en in the Baltimore Police Department. So I am no stranger to vio­lence.

Indeed, my years sur­round­ed by sense­less crime filled me with out­rage and the desire for revenge — includ­ing the death penal­ty.

But I have learned a lot since then, includ­ing the scary fact that a sin­gle mis­take could be mean the exe­cu­tion of an inno­cent per­son.

As some­one who has ded­i­cat­ed my life to enforc­ing the law, I can’t live with that. I tes­ti­fied before the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment this fall, shar­ing my jour­ney from death penal­ty sup­port­er to a sup­port­er of repeal. And last month the Commission val­i­dat­ed my expe­ri­ence by vot­ing for the same — the repeal of Maryland’s death penal­ty. It was a smart deci­sion and I hope the leg­is­la­ture will move quick­ly to enact it.

As I said, my oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty evolved. During my years in Vietnam and lat­er as a mil­i­tary police­man in Louisiana, I was exposed to vio­lence as a mat­ter of rou­tine. My anger at those who would harm inno­cent peo­ple boiled over. Then, work­ing in some of the poor­est and crime-rid­den neigh­bor­hoods of Baltimore only strength­ened my feel­ing that some peo­ple were sim­ply beyond redemp­tion. It was a fair­ly sim­ple con­clu­sion for me to think that the most evil peo­ple in our soci­ety deserved the death penal­ty. In my view, those who opposed it were mud­dle­head­ed, knee-jerk lib­er­als who were just plain wrong.

I felt that way until about ten years ago. The last decade has seen a broad shift in pub­lic opin­ion on the death penal­ty, and I was not immune to the new infor­ma­tion that was com­ing out about inno­cent peo­ple being sen­tenced to death. I was also struck by a talk on the death penal­ty by then Archbishop of Baltimore, William Cardinal Keeler, when he spoke at a mass at my parish in Towson. I real­ized then that I had to learn more.

I read about Kirk Noble Bloodsworth — a man sen­tenced to die in Maryland for a crime he did not com­mit. I could not begin to imag­ine the absolute hor­ror of lan­guish­ing on death row an inno­cent man. I could not imag­ine the antic­i­pa­tion of being lift­ed onto a gur­ney, strapped down and inject­ed with a com­bi­na­tion of lethal drugs by an incom­pe­tent nurse’s aide — know­ing all the time that I had done noth­ing wrong.

As I read about Mr. Bloodsworth and oth­er inno­cent peo­ple that came close to exe­cu­tion, my doubts about the death penal­ty grew. Human beings are sim­ply not right 100 per­cent of the time. No amount of reforms, tech­no­log­i­cal advances, or legal pro­ce­dures can undo that fact. If the death penal­ty remains, some state, per­haps even our state, will kill an inno­cent per­son. Can we live with that?

Like many peo­ple, I have strug­gled to make sense of this issue. The death penal­ty seems like a pro­por­tion­ate pun­ish­ment for a griev­ous crime. At least it brings jus­tice to vic­tims in the face of evil. But does it? My reli­gion teach­es that the path to true peace is through for­give­ness. John Paul II trav­eled to an Italian prison to for­give the man who shot him. The death penal­ty keeps us from fol­low­ing that noble exam­ple. It cer­tain­ly does not bring back or even hon­or the dead. It also does not enno­ble the liv­ing. It does noth­ing to assuage the sor­row of the vic­tim’s loved ones. In fact, as I sat through the com­mis­sion hear­ings wait­ing to tes­ti­fy, I heard from vic­tims’ fam­i­lies who said the oppo­site — that the death penal­ty’s uncer­tain­ty only brought them more grief.

The clos­er you look at it, the less the death penal­ty makes any sense. As the Maryland com­mis­sion found, the risk of exe­cut­ing an inno­cent per­son is just too high to jus­ti­fy main­tain­ing a pun­ish­ment that does not deter, costs too much, and harms vic­tims’ fam­i­lies.

And as a for­mer police offi­cer, I would add that the death penal­ty is not need­ed to pro­tect the pub­lic. It is time for Maryland to make the com­mon-sense choice and replace the death penal­ty with life with­out parole.

Michael May, of Rodgers Forge, is an attor­ney and for­mer­ly served as a Baltimore City police offi­cer and a mil­i­tary police offi­cer.

(M. May, ​“Time to end the death penal­ty in Maryland,” The Baltimore Examiner, December 1, 2008). See New Voices and Recent Legislative Activity.

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