Maryland’s Governor, Martin O’Malley, today signed the legislation to repeal Maryland’s death penalty. The new law makes Maryland the sixth state in six years to end the death penalty.
Maryland represents the first time a Governor put the full weight of his office behind a campaign to end the death penalty. Governor O’Malley sponsored the bill, testified on its behalf in front of the General Assembly, and made numerous public statements in support of repeal.
“A few years ago, you would not see a governor with national ambitions making the end of the death penalty a banner issue,” said Shari Silberstein, Executive Director of Equal Justice USA (EJUSA), a national organization that supports death penalty repeal. “But supporting repeal of the death penalty is no longer a politically risky move. The death penalty is no longer the ‘third rail’ of politics.”
The dwindling of the controversy around repeal of the death penalty reflects a growing realization that the flaws in the death penalty system cannot be fixed. Maryland is a prime example of a state that took great pains to make their death penalty system more accurate. Maryland instituted a moratorium on executions in 2002, conducted two major studies in 2003 and 2008, and enacted significant reforms to the death penalty in 2009 that made Maryland’s death penalty one of the narrowest in the nation.
“Maryland tinkered with its death penalty for over a decade before finally accepting it can’t be fixed. Even the man who led the charge to fix Maryland’s death penalty four years ago is saying it can’t be done,” said Silberstein.
The architect of the 2009 reforms, Maryland Senator Bobby Zirkin, previously supported the death penalty but this year became a pivotal vote in favor of repeal. Zirkin said that Maryland still risked executing an innocent person and that the state’s death penalty failed families of murder victims.
“There are very few people left who think the death penalty works,” said Silberstein. “Most agree that the death penalty is a disaster, so repeal is no longer necessarily a personal philosophical platform. It’s a common sense solution to an otherwise intractable problem.”
“Maryland is the latest in a national trend of states concluding the death penalty is a failure. Six states in six years have repealed the death penalty,” said Silberstein. “And it will not be the last.”
