Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment Examines State Death Penalty

On July 28, 2008, the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment held the first of sev­er­al pub­lic hear­ings to assess whether Maryland death penal­ty pro­ce­dures meet basic stan­dards of fair­ness and avoid bias and error. Established ear­li­er this year by Maryland’s General Assembly, the 23-mem­ber com­mis­sion is exam­in­ing issues includ­ing racial dis­par­i­ties in the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty, the costs of lit­i­gat­ing pro­longed cap­i­tal cas­es as com­pared to life impris­on­ment, and the risk of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent. Following the hear­ings, the Commission will sub­mit a final report of its find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions by December 15, 2008.

Excerpts from Testimony:

“To be mean­ing­ful, jus­tice should be swift and sure. Life with­out parole, which begins imme­di­ate­ly, is both of these; the death penal­ty is nei­ther. Capital pun­ish­ment drags vic­tims’ loved ones through an ago­niz­ing and lengthy process, hold­ing out the promise of one pun­ish­ment in the begin­ning and often result­ing in a life sen­tence in the end anyway.”

- let­ter to Commission from mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­lies read by Lisa Delity, sis­ter of mur­der vic­tim, 8/​19/​08

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“I left the state’s attorney’s office more than ten years ago, but I still remem­ber the agony of attempt­ing to make the fun­da­men­tal deci­sion of whether to ask a jury or judge to con­demn some­one to death. Our sys­tem invests an indi­vid­ual pros­e­cu­tor with unfet­tered dis­cre­tion to make that deci­sion. I now believe that to do so ratio­nal­ly and fair­ly is beyond human capabilities.”

- Judge Andrew L. Sonner, for­mer MD state pros­e­cu­tor, 8/​19/​08

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“It is dif­fi­cult to sym­pa­thize with a cold-blood­ed killer, but it makes no sense that a mur­der­er in one coun­ty is sub­ject to the death penal­ty when an iden­ti­cal crime would be treat­ed in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent way, if it were com­mit­ted in another county.”

- Deborah Poritz, for­mer Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, 7/​28/​08

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“We elect our tri­al-lev­el pros­e­cu­tors by coun­ty so that local peo­ple have local con­trol over how the dis­cre­tion of the office is exer­cised. If the vot­ers of sub­ur­ban Baltimore County choose to elect a pros­e­cu­tor who seeks the death penal­ty fre­quent­ly, while the voters

of down­town Baltimore City elect one who seeks it rarely, that is their choice.”

- Kent Sheiddegger, ​“Smoke & Mirrors on Race and the Death Penalty” — report pre­sent­ed to Commission, 7/​28/​08

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“The death penal­ty is a bank­rupt pol­i­cy that wastes increas­ing­ly scarce state and fed­er­al resources. Our state des­per­ate­ly needs to invest more in car­ing for those trau­ma­tized by vio­lence, par­tic­u­lar­ly youth, if we are ever going to break the cycle of vio­lence in of our com­mu­ni­ties. Our tax dol­lars would be much more effec­tive­ly invest­ed in edu­ca­tion, men­tal and phys­i­cal health care, child­care – and oth­er essen­tial ingre­di­ents of oppor­tu­ni­ty, equal­i­ty and public safety.”

– Meldridge James, NAACP, 7/​28/​08

See Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment. See also Studies.