Anguish, Anger on Both Sides Of Md. Death Penalty Debate

By Jo Becker

Fred Romano recounted in detail the 1987 rape and murder of his sister: The man who broke into the 20-year-old newlywed's house and assaulted her for hours before shooting her in the head twice and snagging a beer from her refrigerator. The pain of waiting for the state to execute Dawn Marie Garvin's killer.

 "People like my sister get death. There was no trial, no jury, no appeal," Romano told Maryland lawmakers yesterday. "There was blood, there was gunfire and there was rape."

 A few feet away in the Senate hearing room sat the mother of Steven H. Oken, the man sentenced to die for Garvin's murder. Davida Oken, a gray-haired woman dressed in a peacock blue suit, told lawmakers of her son's remorse and her own fear as she waits for her son to die by lethal injection.

 "We, too, have been victims," she said, as Romano muttered and shook his head. "How does the personality of your child, the sunshine of your life, change? I don't know, but it happens. It happens, and it seems there is no amount of remorse or apology that can make the pain go away. But I am committed to my son, who I love very much."

 As the General Assembly considers bills that run the gamut from abolishing the death penalty to mandating that prosecutors seek it whenever possible, yesterday's hearing before the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee brought home the intensely emotional nature of a debate raging across the country.

 Until yesterday, much of Maryland's debate had focused on the statistic-laden University of Maryland study released last month that found that prosecutors are more likely to seek the death penalty for black killers of white victims than for other murderers. Despite the findings, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) effectively lifted a moratorium imposed by his Democratic predecessor.

 Oken's execution, initially set for mid-March, has been put on hold while Maryland's highest court evaluates a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision. But state lawmakers are still grappling with whether to fix the system or be rid of it.

 Besides the bill to abolish capital punishment, lawmakers have suggested a two-year moratorium to allow for study of the racial and geographic disparity revealed by the study. Another bill would substantially reduce the number of cases eligible for the death penalty, while a third would raise the standard of proof prosecutors must meet during the sentencing phase of a capital punishment case -- the issue that is holding up the Oken case.

 Still other bills target prosecutorial discretion. One would require that prosecutors seek the death penalty in all eligible cases. Yet another bill would mandate an extra layer of judicial review to determine whether the death penalty is being applied evenly. Another set of bills, prompted by the Washington area sniper shootings, would expand the death penalty to serial killers.

 Before Ehrlich took office, Maryland was one of just two states to institute a moratorium on executions. The other is Illinois, where the governor, George Ryan, cleared out death row last month before leaving office, commuting the sentences of 167 people to life without parole and pardoning four men he said had been beaten into confessing to murders they did not commit. Now, Maryland has become a central battleground for death penalty opponents.

 Romano, who lives in Bel Air where his sister was murdered, expressed no sympathy for the 12 men on Maryland's death row. "They still breathe, they still eat, and they still get to see their mommies and daddies," he said.

 As Romano sat in the audience with a plastic bag at his feet containing the wedding picture of his sister, a Chevy Chase couple whose daughter Shannon Schieber was murdered in Philadelphia in 1998 pleaded with lawmakers to abolish capital punishment.

 "One of the reasons given for the imposition of the death penalty in cases such as ours is that it brings closure to the survivors," said Sylvester J. Schieber. "There is no such thing as closure when a violent crime rips away the life of someone dear to you. . . . Killing Shannon's murderer wouldn't have stopped the unfolding of the world around us with its constant reminders of unfulfilled hopes and dreams."

 Yesterday's hours-long hearing also brought testimony from Madison Hobley, one of the four Illinois death row inmates pardoned by Ryan.

 "I can sympathize with Fred Romano," Hobley said. "I lost my wife and child in a fire I was falsely accused of setting, and I spent 16 years on death row."

 Nina Morrison, the executive director of the Innocence Project, a Cardozo Law School program dedicated to freeing the wrongfully convicted through DNA testing, spoke of the 124 death row inmates who have been exonerated nationwide, the questionable reliability of eyewitness testify and the case of Kirk Bloodsworth, who was freed from Maryland's death row by DNA evidence a decade ago.

 But senators who support the death penalty, backed by the State's Attorneys Association, challenged opponents to produce evidence that anyone on death row is innocent. The fact that Maryland has executed so few people shows that the system works, they argued.

 "We've set very very high standard to meet not only state but federal constitutional standards," said Sen. Philip C. Jimeno (D-Anne Arundel).

 Meanwhile, Ehrlich said yesterday that his mind remains unchanged, meaning that those supporting a continued moratorium or total repeal would have to muster a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate to overcome a gubernatorial veto.

 "Our position is what it always has been," he said. "We support the imposition of capital punishment for the most egregious cases."