Maryland Citizens Against State Executions

Bill Creating State Commission on Death Penalty Advances to Senate Floor

SB 614 – a bill to create the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment – passed the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee yesterday with a vote of 7-4, with support from Republicans Senators Alex Mooney and Bryan Simonaire. With the 2008 repeal still one vote short of passage in the same Committee, this legislation offers a constructive way forward. It empowers a broadly representative and distinguished state body to conduct the first comprehensive review our state’s death penalty and, as important, to make recommendations about its future.

We need help to make sure SB 614 passes the full General Assembly!

Please call, write, and email your legislators today.
Tell them you oppose the death penalty and urge them to vote for SB 614 / HB 1111 – Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment.

Talking Points:

Repeal

• Racial and geographic bias in Maryland death sentencing is well documented – skin color and county lines should NOT determine who lives and who dies.
• We make mistakes and innocent people get sentenced to death - nationally 127 people once sentenced to death have been found innocent; in Maryland, Kirk Bloodsworth was sentenced to death and spent almost nine years in prison for the rape and murder of a child that he did not commit.
• The death penalty is NOT a deterrent - in fact, states that have and consistently use the death penalty tend to have the highest murder rates.
• The death penalty is expensive - the Abell Foundation in Baltimore recently released a cost study of Maryland's death penalty – the most complex and exhaustive such study ever done. The Abell study found that Maryland has spent at least $186 million on its death penalty in the last 30 years; this is state spending over and above what Maryland would have spent if life without parole were the maximum sentence. Each death sentence costs nearly three times what it would have cost to secure life in prison without parole, including life time incarceration costs.
• Maryland is ready – polling consistently shows that an overwhelming majority of Marylanders support replacing the death penalty with life without parole.

Study Commission

• Research has been done on various aspects of Maryland’s death penalty. We have findings of racial bias and the high costs of death sentencing. Other important concerns – such as the impact on murder victims’ families and public safety – have barely been addressed. SB 614/HB 1111 creates a public vehicle for a comprehensive assessment that make recommendations for future action.