According to The Washington Post, Gov. Martin O'Malley is about to issue his first pardons since taking office in January 2007, and there are no convicted killers on the short list of those who will catch a break from the Democratic governor. In fact, Mr. O'Malley's mercy extends only to seven people, and they were convicted years ago of petty theft and disorderly conduct.
"I suppose my orientation from being a big-city mayor and having seen the violence on our streets is more of a tough-on-crime orientation," the governor and former mayor of Baltimore told the Post. "You probably won't see me doing as many of these as past governors."
Mr. O'Malley, a one-time prosecutor, is also a war-on-drugs warrior. Two years ago, he opposed a relatively modest change in Maryland law that would have given judges discretion in how they sentence low-level, nonviolent drug dealers, the kind who generally sell dope to pay for their own habits. On a talk-radio show, Mr. O'Malley called drug dealing a "violent crime" that needed to be punished, and he opposed the reform.
So I wasn't shocked to see where he's pretty much hit the brakes on pardons.
Mr. O'Malley might have come out against the death penalty and crusaded for its repeal. But opposition to the death penalty does not a corrections reformer make.
Mr. O'Malley is more aptly described as a savvy Democrat in the post-Willie Horton era. Democrats in this era - a prolonged period of hesitance to present effective corrections reforms - have tried to earn and keep tough-on-crime bona fides to counter Republican accusations that they are too soft. With few exceptions, Democrats have been big 'fraidy-cats when it comes to ending the war on drugs, putting corrections (and common sense) back into corrections or challenging the death penalty.
Bill Clinton and almost all the Democratic governors and presidential aspirants since him have either supported the death penalty or, in the face of troubling revelations about its application - some 133 exonerations of condemned inmates nationwide since 1973, according to the Death Penalty Information Center - they recently came to oppose it. Those who changed their minds about the death penalty moved to life without parole as the alternative.
When he campaigned for governor in the mid-1990s, Parris Glendening supported the death penalty and even wanted to speed up the process. It wasn't until the final year of his second term that he came to support a moratorium in Maryland. "Life means life" was Mr. Glendening's song.
