With a stroke of a pen, Gov. Martin O'Malley removed the death penalty from state law Thursday - making Maryland the 18th state in the nation to have abolished capital punishment.
Surrounded by advocates who have fought for repeal year after year, the governor signed legislation setting life without parole as the maximum sentence for even the most heinous murders. The bill, which passed both the Senate and the House with votes to spare this session after being squelched in committee in previous years, fulfills a goal O'Malley set early in his administration.
Death penalty repeal was one of more than 200 measures approved by O'Malley at the 2nd mass bill-signing ceremony since the end of the state's annual legislative session April 8.
Among them were measures legalizing the use of marijuana to help relieve the pain of people with serious medical conditions and making it easier for immigrants who are here illegally to obtain driver's licenses.
But it was the abolition of the death penalty after more than 300 years on the books in Maryland that took center stage. The Archdiocese of Baltimore announced plans to illuminate the Basilica of the Assumption from dusk Thursday through dawn Friday to celebrate the repeal.
While the legislation would prevent future death sentences in Maryland, it does not finally shut down death row. 5 men remain under sentence of death in the state, for murders going back as 1983, and so far O'Malley has declined to commute their sentences.
None is in imminent danger because the state has been operating under a de facto moratorium since 2006, when the Court of Appeals struck down the rules under which executions were carried out. With passage of repeal, it is questionable whether they will ever be revised.
Source: Baltimore Sun, May 2, 2013
Maryland joins global trend against the death penalty
Maryland is the 18th US state to abolish the death penalty, and the fourth in the past five years
The US state of Maryland has joined the overwhelming global trend towards ending the death penalty, Amnesty International said today after Governor Martin O'Malley signed the abolition of capital punishment into law.
The abolition bill, passed by the state legislature in March 2013, makes Maryland the 18th US state to relinquish use of the death penalty since the US Supreme Court approved new capital laws in 1976.
"Maryland has abandoned a punishment that should have no place in a society that claims to respect human dignity, and that in the USA is riddled with discrimination and error," said Brian Evans, Amnesty International USA's Abolish the Death Penalty campaign director.
"More than 1/3 of US states have now abolished the death penalty, and we urge the remaining 32 states, and the federal government, to follow suit."
Amnesty International urges Governor O'Malley to commute the death sentences of the five men who remain on death row in Maryland despite today's abolition bill. This would avoid the cruel prospect of the state applying a punishment that it has rightly rejected.
Maryland's abolition of the death penalty is consistent with a global trend towards ending capital punishment. According to the organization's most recent yearly report on death penalty statistics, despite some disappointing setbacks in 2012, worldwide movement away from the death penalty continued last year.
Such a trend can also be seen in the USA where 4 states have legislated to abolish the death penalty in the past 5 years - New Mexico (2009), Illinois (2011), Connecticut (2012) and now Maryland.
In addition New Jersey abolished the death penalty in law in 2007, the same year neighbouring New York state commuted its last death sentence, following a 2004 court ruling that its capital law violated the state's constitution.
On the other hand, 7 US states - Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, Missouri, Ohio, Alabama and Florida - account for nearly 3/4 of the more than 1,000 executions nationwide since 1994. Texas alone accounts for 37% of all US executions since 1976 (when the US Supreme Court gave its approval to new capital laws) and today is approaching its 500th execution.
Background
In January 2013, when Governor O'Malley introduced a bill in the Maryland state legislature to abolish the state's use of the death penalty, he said it "does not work in terms of preventing violent crime and the taking of human life". Pointing to the global picture, he noted that abolitionist countries were "a much more expansive community than the number who still use the death penalty".
His position is in line with that what Amnesty International has been saying since it started to campaign against death penalty 36 years ago: there is no convincing evidence to indicate that the death penalty works as a special deterrent against crime.
The organization opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception, regardless of the nature or circumstances of the crime; guilt, innocence or other characteristics of the individual; or the method used by the state to carry out the execution. The death penalty violates the right to life and is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.
More than 2/3 of the world's countries - 140 - have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. In 2012, at least 682 executions were known to have been carried out in 21 countries worldwide. At least 1,722 newly imposed death sentences in 58 countries could be confirmed, compared to 1,923 in 63 countries the year before.
To get more information about global statistics on death penalty you can access Amnesty International's Death Sentences and Executions 2012 report.
Source: Amnesty International, May 2, 2013
