Maryland attorney general calls for end to executions

By JOHN BIEMER, 

 ANNAPOLIS, Maryland - Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. called Thursday for Maryland to abolish its death penalty, noting systemic flaws and the possibility innocent people could be put to death. Because of the system's "fallibility," he said, capital punishment could come only at the "intolerable cost of executing, every so often, the wrong person." He said 102 people on death rows around the country have been exonerated since the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) allowed states to reinstate capital punishment in 1976.

Currant, a Democrat, outlined his views in a letter sent Wednesday to Gov. Robert Ehrlich and other state leaders. He has been a consistent opponent of the death penalty and argued it does not deter crime.

 Ehrlich, a Republican, has said he will not continue a moratorium on the death penalty imposed by Democratic former Gov. Parris Glendening, but will conduct a case-by-case review of death-row pleas for clemency that cross his desk.

 A recent study by a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, found that race and jurisdiction play significant roles in whether a criminal is sentenced to death in Maryland. Black defendants who kill white victims are statistically more likely to be charged with a capital offense, the study concluded.

 Messages left at Ehrlich's press office were not immediately returned.

 Lawmakers on both sides of the issue agreed Curran's opinion carries weight, even if it does not directly influence the status of the death penalty.

 "He is highly respected," said Sen. Brian Frosh, the Democratic chairman of the Judicial Proceedings Committee. "The guy's got a ton of experience."

 Frosh said he believes a bill to abolish the death penalty would have a chance of getting out of his committee, but he doesn't know what would happen on the floor of the Senate. 

End Maryland's Death Penalty

WHEN MARYLAND Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. decided to end his predecessor's moratorium on capital punishment, the University of Maryland study that had prompted the pause did not deter him. Though it showed glaring racial and geographic disparities in the state's application of the death penalty, he chose to ignore it. Now, apparently, the governor is having second thoughts, at the urging of Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, a death penalty opponent whom Mr. Ehrlich has placed in charge of reviewing both the study and the capital cases that will come before him. Mr. Steele has said publicly that he found the results "troubling," and he has convinced the governor -- even with executions now set to resume -- that the administration ought to take a second look.

 Mr. Steele's evident desire to temper Mr. Ehrlich's enthusiasm for executions is laudable. But study for its own sake is not what the state needs now. Blacks in Maryland who kill whites are dramatically more likely to be charged with a capital offense than are people of any race who kill blacks; that's no longer in doubt. The only interesting question is what -- if anything -- Mr. Ehrlich means to do about this fundamental unfairness.

 Mr. Ehrlich's spokesman, Paul Schurick, says the governor wants to examine whether the local discretion among prosecutors that gives rise to the regional and racial disparities might somehow be altered to smooth out capital punishment's uneven application. This is the question that Mr. Ehrlich should have considered before lifting the moratorium. If the governor now concedes that the study raises real fairness questions that may warrant policy changes, it is hard to justify executing people sentenced under the current system. Yet Mr. Ehrlich remains committed to carrying out existing death sentences, Mr. Schurick says.

Since reinstating the death penalty in 1978, Maryland has executed only three people. It has also wrongly convicted an innocent man, Kirk Bloodsworth, who was freed in 1993. With Mr. Ehrlich now loosing the state's executioners, several of the 12 people on death row could be put to death in relatively short order. This week Maryland's attorney general, J. Joseph Curran Jr., wrote to Mr. Ehrlich "to ask [him] to abolish the death penalty." Mr. Curran cited "the inevitability of an irreversible mistake that results in an innocent person's death." Maryland should abolish the death penalty -- for the reason Mr. Curran cites, for the reasons evident in the University of Maryland study, and for the still more basic reason that the state should not be in the business of killing people. Executions have been so rare in Maryland that the death penalty cannot be functioning as a deterrent. Rather, it serves to send a message that the state cares more about some lives than about others -- and that it is even willing to risk innocent lives to be seen as tough on crime. That's a bad message, and Mr. Ehrlich shouldn't need further study to understand that.