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Subscribe to RSSMaryland’s Senate voted Wednesday to repeal the death penalty, moving the state one step closer to joining 17 others that ban capital punishment.
The Senate voted 27-20 to pass legislation that would replace execution with a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. The bill must be approved by the House of Delegates before becoming law.
Gov. Martin O'Malley said he was pleased with the vote.
"We remain hopeful that we will see a similar outcome in the House," he said in a statement. "It's time to end this ineffective and expensive practice and put our efforts behind crime fighting strategies that work."
Maryland has five inmates on death row, although no executions have been conducted since 2005. The state has carried out five executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
“The vote in the Maryland Senate to end the death penalty is in line with an emerging trend away from capital punishment around the country,” Richard Dieter, the center’s executive director, said in a statement. “Death sentences and executions have sharply declined, and now states are taking the final step toward eliminating the death penalty.”
Last year, Connecticut lawmakers abolished the death penalty, replacing it with life without parole, but voters in California rejected a law that would have ended capital punishment.
Some states are considering similar legislation, such as Montana, Colorado, Kentucky, Oregon and Delaware. The number of people sentenced to death in 2012 – 78 – marked a 75 percent decline from the 315 sentences imposed in 1996, the center said.
Supporters believe it will pass the House, but opponents think the issue will ultimately be decided by popular vote, The Associated Press reported.
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In other news, the executive branch can give any citizen the death penalty if they are labeled a terrorist and *suspect* they are planning an attack. What was Obama's slogan, oh yeah, "Forward" ;)
Crime and Punishment. More and more a fictional work.
Good for Maryland! One giant step towards civilized behavior. Most other states would prefer to have a justice system more like Yemen, North Korea, Iran and Iraq than to share values with more civilized nations like those in Europe.
Capital Punishment - punishment levied against a person for the crimes committed = bad
Abortion - the idea that women should have the option of ending the life of their unborn child, because it's their right = good
Is that about right?
Capital Punishment - punishment levied against a person for the crimes committed = bad
Abortion - the idea that women should have the option of ending the life of their unborn child, because it's their right = good
Is that about right?
no mo
Anyone who actually believes that people are pro-abortion is a bonehead. For most people, including most progressives, it is about not letting the government make decisions for other people. I would not favor an abortion in my own family except under extreme conditions of health, etc., but I certainly would hate for anyone else, including you, to make that decision for us.
ps ... the comment was not that wonderful .... we didn't need to see it twice.
Maybe we should take it a step further and pin a medal on them?
Those who commit murder and those who believe in the death penalty have something in common - both believe they have the right to decide who dies.
Yeah Maryland. Moving into the current century not falling into the 3rd world thinking of Texas and others. Killing someone that has done wrong is not justice it is revenge. There is a differance and until we understand the nuances of our own language and use terminology correctly we have no business taking lives.
What do you think about killing an unborn life that has done no wrong? Your thoughts and opinions on this? Also, do you think putting someone in prison for 5, 10, 20+ years is also a sign of vengeance, or justice?
If you can't figure out that prison is to keep the convicted person from committing another crime you are a bonehead. Ideally, incarceration includes rehabilitation .... that is why they call it the "Department of Corrections." Revenge, which the death penalty clearly is, is a totally different matter.
The death penalty and abortion rights are two different subjects.
Killing someone who has done wrong means they will not be able to do it again. Period!
Imprisoning people isn't really justice. There is no justice. Nothing can right a wrong that changed a life path. It is good practice to contain a person that poses a threat to society, like a murderer or a robber or a child molester, but realistically the bulk of the prison population is for drug possession and they were only threats to themselves. I think mental health care is a better option to retraining law breakers to be productive members of society. Prisons just make criminals better at it. If you are committing crimes you are obviously not in good mental health and if it is a fixable condition why should tax dollars pay for the keep of a person that can pay their own way with training and medication. Stopping the development of a fetus is not vengeance or justice, its not even murder because at the point the laws allows it, the cells could not have survived outside of the support system of the womb. Not anything to do with this vine. Women don't have abortions because they want to take a life, they have abortions because they are saving thier own quality of life, sometimes their literal life. There is no malice involved in the decision.
Filbert, even God did not take a life for murder. Cain murdered Able and not only did he sentence Cain to walk the Earth without roots and relationship God said anyone that hurt Cain would be punished. Jesus stopped a stoning of a woman that committed a crime punishable by death in that century. If they are above the death penalty then who are we to impose it.
Note to criminals everywhere: After committing a capital crime, flee to Maryland, surrender to authorities, and fight extradition.
What a stupid statement. Do you realize that criminals who would have gotten the death penalty will instead get life imprisonment without the possibility of parole? We're not talking about Club Med here. I live in Maryland and fully support repeal of the death penalty. It is not worth the risk of an innocent person being executed. It has to go.
That is a difficult subject. If the courts were infallable, and were always 100% correct in their judgement, the death penalty would be justified. But there are many people convicted of crimes they did not convict, either due to false testimony of witnesses (including law enforcement people), poorly selected juries (some people who do jury duty believe it is their duty to come up with a guilty verdict, facts be damned), and crooked judges. There are estimates that half of the people in prison did not commit the crimes that they were convicted of. Life in prison would at least leave some hope for people wrongly convicted, but a death sentence denies them that hope.
There is no justification for murder in the 1st degree.
So some nut can walk into a school and shoot it up, or run over dozens at a mall with a nice big pickup, and the most they can get is free room and board and health care for the rest of their life? Well, ain't that just sweet! We sure are civilized.
The people that shoot up schools take themselves out for the most part. People that run over people with their trucks are either mentally unstable or in a defective truck. What good is served by just locking them up or killing them either way. Rehabilitate them, get some strong meds going where appropriate and put them on tethers and give them someone to report to regularly that can make sure they are staying with the program. Besides it's not the guy that already did it that you worry about, you can keep track of him. The one to fear it the one that hasn't shown themselves yet. The sex offenders list doesnt list the ones with the potential to do harm does it?
taxed
What an irrational argument you make!
You imply that because people you describe as "nuts" commit heinous crimes that kill people that the rest of us should be just as uncivilized as those nuts. Don't you strive to be more civilized than the least civilized among us? Maybe not.
If one person dies innocently on death row, there should be NO death penalty PERIOD
39 have died so far....how can anyone say that's OK?
Death is not punishment.
More innocents die without the death penalty. Maryland spends innocent lives to save the guilty. The death penalty does deter murder. Researcher Dudley Sharp, with Justice Matters, does some brilliant analysis on the death penalty. He uses data and research and facts. His studies indicate between 14,000 and 28,000 more people would have been murdered since 1973 if we didn't have the death penalty. The cities with the most murders for the last 30 years (D.C. and Detroit) have no death penalty. Harris County Texas has seen a 73% decrease in murder rates since resuming the death penalty in 1982. Murders in the US doubled during the national moritorium on the death penalty. Life Without Parole costs almost twice as much as the death penalty. Maryland has 56 cases. LWOP, those cases cost $186 million. Death Penalty, those cases will cost the state $80 million. The state will pay more than twice as much for LWOp than they would for the death penalty. So, more innocent lives will be lost and the cost to house the LWOPers will raise the costs to more than double. Seems like a stupid move on the part of the legislatores. Seems more in favor of murderers than in favor of the innocent citizens. I'm glad I'm not in Maryland.
The death penalty is not a deterent to murder and is murder.
rotteneggs:
Here is an update:
based upon the 28 recent studies finding for deterrence.
lives saved, via deterrence, are from 33 to 924 per year, or 990 - 27,720 for the fourty years, 1973-2012.
Please review:
OF COURSE THE DEATH PENALTY DETERS: A review of the debate
TRUTH = Anti death penalty failure, Dudley Sharp
To: Maryland Senate
cc: Media throughout Maryland area
From: Dudley Sharp
TRUTH = Anti death penalty failure, Dudley Sharp
Fact checking WOULD be the undoing of all anti death penalty efforts, IF the media participated.
As the media pushes these anti death penalty frauds, as opposed to uncovering them, it's a very tough road for the TRUTH.
The Maryland cost study, as many others, is bogus.
Please FACT CHECK
1) Death Penalty Costs: Maryland
Saving Costs with The Death Penalty
2) INNOCENCE
There is no credible case, ever, of an innocent executed in Maryland.
Nationally, possibly, 0.4% of those sentenced to death have been actually innocent, all of those have been released upon appeal.
Based upon those two issues, is there a more accurate sanction in the world? Maybe not.
The 130 (now 142) death row "innocents" scam
3) THE DEATH PENALTY: A GREATER PROTECTOR OF THE INNOCENT
a) The Death Penalty: Saving More Innocent Lives
b) Innocents More At Risk Without Death Penalty
c) OF COURSE THE DEATH PENALTY DETERS: A review of the debate
4) GOVERNANCE
Had O'Malley et al road blocked abortions or welfare, as they have executions, what would the media be doing?
No one has any doubt.
The death penalty deos nothing but murder someone.
If you ban the death penalty, only faiths will have the death penalty.
Let those criminals maim and kill. We still must treat them humanely.
After all, it's not their fault. Society has let them down.
LMAO! Good point, they should have more chances, release them inside the Governor's mansion.
Our Governor O'Malley wants all killing done before they reach the birth canal
Governor O'Malley wants people like the Colorado theater shooter to live to shoot again
This is simply one more facet of weasel governor o’malley’s attempt to embellish his liberal credentials (and “out-liberal” Andrew Cuomo) in preparation for his run-up to the 2016 presidential race. Another feather in his cap will be the most draconian gun control laws in the country with license fees, fingerprinting, etc. Last year he got approval for in-state-tuition for illegals at MD colleges as well as gay-marriage. God save us all!
Way to go Maryland!
Ross-517902, Gaithersburger,don97524
John Frederick Thanos (c. 1951 – May 17, 1994) was convicted in 1992 of the 1990 murders of Billy Winebrenner, Gregory Allen Taylor, and Melody Pistorio. At his trial he taunted the families of his victims, saying he wished he could dig up their bodies and defile their corpses. "Their cries bring laughter from the darkest caverns of my soul.... I don't believe I could satisfy my thirst yet in this matter unless I was to be able to dig these brats' bones up out of their graves right now and beat them into powder and urinate on them and then stir it into a murky yellowish elixir and serve it up to those loved ones," Thanos said during his sentencing hearing for the murder of Winebrenner and Pistorio.
Thanos waived his appeals and refused to fight his death sentence after he was convicted and sentenced to die. He was executed in 1994 by the state of Maryland by lethal injection, aged 43, becoming the first person to be executed in Maryland since 1976 when the death penalty was reinstated. His last word was "Adios."
MAYBE WE SHOULD HAVE LET HIM STAY IN JAIL, OH YEAH AND HE WORE HE WOULD KILL AGAIN..IN COURT IN FRONT OF THE JUDGE, PROSECUTOR AND HIS DEFENSE ATTORNEY.
Anyone who thinks this man did not desrve the death penalty, have never watched a high school full of children walk around and cry and to this day still not understand, how this could happen to their sister, best friend, friend, daughter, team mate, student etc. You think the death penalty is inhumane. Yes it is murder. I don't care, but the fact is that he has no chance to escape and do this again. END OF STORY until you live through it, and have to learn at 15 the world is not innocent then your comments will matter..
My heart goes out to you, however, for every single story like yours there a 35 other stories of false convictions of innocent people. You have to go with the rule, not the exception.
sorry to hear that maryland...keep your lowlife south of the mason dixon please..
MIKE
So you, like the people you would like to see executed, believe that you have the right to decide who should die?
What was not mentioned on this bill is the part where, to keep its conscience clear and not execute any prisoners in their state, all criminals that would normally get the death penalty will be extradited to Texas, where a death row quick lane has been established to handle out of state executions.
I hope the citizens of Maryland are pleased when they may have to pay for a nut job that savagely raped, tortured, killed and ate a 5 year old girl and watch him set in a nice jail cell getting 3 hot meals a day free health care free TV and a possibility to do it all again when you bleeding hearts let him out! It's better to just do away with a mad dog, you can't train them, regretfully there is evil in this world. That's why I refused a good job in Maryland!
wizard
You are irrational. The choice is not between the death penalty and letting him out, it is between government murder and life without parole is very much more uncomfortable conditions than you described.