Gov. O’Malley to commute sentences of Maryland’s remaining death-row inmates
When the Maryland legislature outlawed imposition of the death penalty in criminal cases, it curiously did nothing about death sentences already imposed. In the two years since, one of the five prisoners on death row in MD died of natural causes, and it became apparent that Maryland could not carry out the other four sentences. This week it was announced that the problem is permanently resolved.
All four of those remaining will have their sentences commuted to life without possibility of parole. The expected argle-bargle in response goes on as usual.
There are many reasons given for opposing the Death Penalty: cost, ineffectiveness at discouraging further crime, inhumanity, executing the innocent, disproportionate racial impact, religious commandment, and others. There are many reasons given for supporting the Death Penalty, mostly coming down to wanting to hurt those who hurt others, except for the motive that one is not supposed to mention: keeping the riff-raff down and spreading paralyzing fear in target populations, the way lynchings used to do, and police murders still do. (BTW, I hear that DoJ is considering Color of Law actions against several policemen who killed unarmed civilians in this past year. I don't consider such a rumor ripe for Diarying, but if any cases are announced, we will have plenty to discuss.)
I am simply going to take it as given that Progressives are against judicial killing, and GOPosaurs, Dominionists, and other RWNJs are mostly for. Anyway, that is not our topic today. We will be discussing facts, such as statements and actions by government officials, and of course some of the leading numbers.
Concerning the four prisoners on Death Row in Maryland,
In November, Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler said he believes the state lacks any legal way to execute them, citing an earlier court ruling that invalidated state procedures for administering lethal injections.
“In my judgment, leaving these death sentences in place does not serve the public good of the people of Maryland — present or future,” O’Malley said in a statement Wednesday.
We are making progress.
How the death penalty continued its slow, steady decline in 2014
This year, as executions went awry in high-profile ways, this clear trend continued. The United States executed 35 inmates in 2014, the smallest number in two decades. And the number of inmates sentenced to death is projected to be 72, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which would be fewer than a quarter of the number of death sentences handed down in the mid-1990s.
The death penalty doesn't get as much press as a human rights issue as Marriage Equality, which the Supreme Court will hear about on Jan. 9, or of extra-judicial police murders since Ferguson. We have no path to getting the courts to simply declare capital punishment unconstitutional, since the Supreme Court has held it to be
Kind and Usual Punishment (to use the title of Jessica Mitford's 1973 book dissecting the issue; and see also her
Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking), in contrast with drawing and quartering and punishments invented after sentencing intended to surpass all that had gone before, which were very much on the Colonists' minds at the time of the American Revolution.
So we have to keep plugging away state by state, and drug manufacturer by drug manufacturer. We have several prime candidates for the next few years, and a few who will apparently hang on to the bitter end.
The Death Penalty in 2014: Year End Report
Maryland was one of six states to ban the death penalty between 2007 and 2013.
There were also seven death penalty exonerations in 2014, taking on average 30 years from tainted convictions to reversals in court and orders to free the victims.
The holdout states still conducting executions in 2014 were
Missouri: 10 executions
Texas: 10
Florida: 8
Oklahoma: 3
Georgia: 2
Arizona: 1
Ohio: 1
However, many states that do not execute felons still have Death Penalty laws on the books, so that there are more than 3,000 people on death rows nationwide, most of them minorities accused of killing Whites. So there is plenty for organizers and The People to do in addition to working against the few remaining states conducting executions in the US.
Because few states have Governors willing to do what Gov. O'Malley has done, admitting that in most of their states none of the remaining death sentences will ever be carried out, and commuting them.