Md. Death Penalty Report Delayed Until After Elections

By Matthew Mosk

September 24, 2002

Academic researchers examining claims of racial bias in the way Maryland prosecutors invoke the death penalty said yesterday that they won't reach any conclusions until after November's election.

 The decision to postpone publication of the comprehensive state-sponsored study of capital cases, which had been scheduled for completion and release next week, was not politically motivated, said University of Maryland professor Raymond Paternoster, who is conducting the research.

 "The brute fact is that this has been an incredibly time-consuming process, and we need more time," Paternoster said. "Some things are as simple as they seem."

 Nevertheless, experts said the delay could muffle debate over the highly charged issue during the race for Maryland governor, because findings about racial bias could have forced the candidates into an immediate confrontation over capital punishment.

 Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has said she supports the death penalty but has backed a moratorium on executions until the research is concluded. Republican Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has opposed the moratorium, saying he would rather review each death penalty case for fairness on his own.

 While about two-thirds of Marylanders say they support capital punishment, they are about evenly split on whether there should be a moratorium while the fairness study is completed, according to pollster Keith Haller.

 In January, Haller found that 45 percent of Marylanders favored a moratorium and 47 percent opposed it, with the remainder undecided. Those results, based on a poll of 800 registered voters, were nearly identical to a similar statewide poll Haller conducted a year earlier.

 James G. Gimpel, a professor of government at the University of Maryland, College Park, said the death penalty's popularity in Maryland has put pressure on Townsend to justify her support for the moratorium.

 "A finding of racial bias would have forced Townsend into clarifying her position, into taking a firm stand on the moratorium, and that could have undermined her support" among death penalty advocates, said Gimpel, who is not involved in the research project.

 Ehrlich spokesman Paul Schurick said he also believes the delay "clearly means that she can avoid clarifying her position on the issue," but he added that he "won't question the motivations of the researchers."

 Irwin L. Goldstein, dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the university, said he recognized that delaying the report until after the election was "an unfortunate coincidence."

 But he said that Paternoster alone made the decision to postpone the results until the end of the year, and that no one at the university consulted the governor's office or either candidate before making it.

 During an afternoon news conference, Paternoster explained how he and a half-dozen doctoral students are reviewing thousands of pages of records from death-penalty eligible cases in Maryland that date to June of 1978.

 He has identified 6,000 homicide cases in Maryland since that date, and concluded that 1,400 involved aggravating factors that would have permitted prosecutors to seek the death penalty. Of those, he said he has roughly 300 more cases to review before he begins trying to decipher the reasons why the death penalty was sought, or not sought, in each case.

 He said it is crucial that he meet his new, self-imposed deadline of Dec. 31 because he is expected to share his findings with the General Assembly when it convenes in Annapolis in January.

 Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) commissioned the $225,000 study two years ago, saying he was troubled by signs that bias may have infected death penalty cases in Maryland and across the country.

 He cited statistics indicating that prosecutors had disproportionately selected black killers of white victims for society's ultimate punishment. At the time, Glendening faced the prospect of executing five men, four of them blacks who had killed white victims.

 In May, with one of those cases scheduled, he imposed a moratorium on the death penalty, a decision he made after urging from Townsend. Her role in the decision drew praise from black legislators and other death penalty opponents who are active in Democratic primaries.

 Kate Phillips, a Townsend spokeswoman, said the lieutenant governor remains "very interested in the results of this study.

 "If there are concerns about how the death penalty is being used, they ought to be looked into and considered."