Death Row

Death penalty repeal due for panel's vote Sen. Brian E. Frosh, chairman of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, said yesterday that he is putting a proposed death penalty repeal measure on the panel's vote schedule for today or tomorrow. However, Frosh said, a vote on the bill could come as late as next week. "I'm for the bill," he said. "I'm ready to vote." The 11-member Senate committee has been waiting for word from Sen. Alex X. Mooney, a Frederick Republican whose vote could swing the outcome.

APPARENTLY some states have learned nothing from the recent spate of exonerations for death row inmates in Illinois. For example, Virginia is in the midst of an execution frenzy, planning to kill seven inmates in as many weeks.The reason is simple. A spokesman for the governor reportedly said, "We've cut the appeals time down from 10 to 15 years to two to four." More states will be following Virginia's lead, thanks to a 1996 federal law that limited death penalty appeals.Under a system like Virginia's, the 77 death row inmates released nationwide since 1973 because evidence surfaced of their innocence would all be dead.

In their first statement in 19 years focusing exclusively on opposing the death penalty, the nation's Roman Catholic bishops issued a call yesterday to "all people of good will, and especially Catholics," to work to end capital punishment.The statement -- timed to coincide with Good Friday observances and also calling for compassion for crime victims -- reflects a growing concern about capital punishment among the bishops, as well as the continuing impact of Pope John Paul II's denunciation of the death penalty during his visit to St. Louis in January.

Ira Johnson was unlike anyone I had ever met. Something about him left you uneasy, as if he knew who you were without asking. He could look right through you, dismiss you, even as you sat in front of him. He was a strange mix of danger and aloofness, the way his legs twitched under the table, the way he leaned so far back in his chair. He would smile, then jingle the handcuffs hanging from his wrists. Something about him, about the way he stared at your back when you turned around, something about him was evil.

Sister Helen Prejean is about to embark on another friendship with an inmate on Louisiana's death row, a relationship that will likely culminate in accompanying the convicted murderer to his execution.Prejean, who wrote of her ministry to death row inmates in "Dead Man Walking," a best-selling book made into a Hollywood film, has accompanied five inmates to their executions. It never gets easier."I just never get used to it because the death house has this surreal aspect to it, that everything seems so normal," Prejean says.

Here is a New York Times editorial, which was published yesterday.FEDERAL judges from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and state judges from the three states of that circuit -- Georgia, Alabama and Florida -- convened last week at an Atlanta resort to discuss how to expedite state death-penalty cases.Though the ostensible goal was to improve the process, there is little doubt that improvement in this context usually means speeding up executions by making it harder for death-row inmates to appeal.

Lois and Ken Robison raised eight children the old-fashioned way -- Sunday school, Boy Scouts and family outings to drive-in movies. She taught third grade; he taught Spanish.They are not the sort of people who expected to be visiting Death Row.But something went wrong with their son Larry: paranoid schizophrenia, doctors finally concluded. The hospitals wouldn't keep him because he wasn't violent. Then, in 1982 at age 24, he proved the doctors wrong and killed five people, including an 11-year-old boy.That's when Lois Robison, who had spent years fighting to get someone to treat her son, found herself fighting to stop the state of Texas from executing him -- and everyone else who's mentally ill and on Death Row.In the past 16 years, she has taken her crusade across the country and beyond, from the Texas legislature to the "Today Show," from the Philippines to Baltimore when Flint Gregory Hunt was executed in 1997.

NEW YORK -- It's death on the installment plan -- and the payments are staggering.Since capital punishment was reinstated in New York four years ago, five men have ended up on death row and the total cost to taxpayers for prosecution and defense in death penalty cases has been estimated at $68 million.And by the time the first lethal injection is administered -- which could be more than 10 years from now -- those costs could soar to more than $238 million.Since 1995, out of 486 "capital eligible" murder cases, New York prosecutors have sought the death penalty against 37 defendants.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court refused yesterday to direct states to step up the pace of executions so that inmates do not have to wait on death row for years.Over two justices' objections, the court turned down the appeals of Florida and Nebraska inmates who argued that it is "cruel and unusual punishment" to execute a prisoner after he has spent years in suspense and fear in the closely confined quarters of death row.The inmates contended that when the delay is the fault of the state, not the inmate, the Constitution should block execution after postponements that run 20 years or beyond.

A convicted murderer facing a mid-November execution date will soon ask Gov. Parris N. Glendening for clemency, a request that could pose political risks for the governor in the final stretch of his hotly contested re-election effort.Tyrone Gilliam is scheduled to be executed the week of Nov. 16, but his attorneys are expected to ask Glendening for mercy in a request that could be filed before the Nov. 3 election.Glendening, a death penalty supporter, is not considered likely to grant clemency in the case.

After years of dragging its feet, the O'Malley administration has proposed regulations to implement Maryland's death penalty, a necessary step to resume capital punishment after the Court of Appeals ruled in 2006 that the previous regulations had not been properly adopted. For all the time it took to craft them, they are remarkably similar to the old ones; the main changes are restrictions on corrections personnel performing a "cut down" procedure to get access to a condemned inmate's vein to administer lethal drugs; more time for the inmate to spend with his or her family; and a provision for a last meal.

Gov. Martin O'Malley's administration took a reluctant step Wednesday toward resuming executions in Maryland after the governor failed earlier this year to persuade the General Assembly to outlaw capital punishment. The state issued revised protocols for lethal injections, which O'Malley had postponed as he sought to build support for a repeal in the legislature. The governor, a Roman Catholic, had made it a personal crusade to end the death penalty. A de facto moratorium has been in place since December 2006, when the state's highest court ruled that the protocols had been improperly developed.

The death penalty law Gov. Martin O'Malley signed Thursday didn't give opponents of capital punishment everything they wanted, but it marked a significant step toward ending executions in Maryland by significantly narrowing the circumstances under which the ultimate punishment can be imposed. Under the new law, prosecutors may seek the death penalty only in cases where there is DNA or biological evidence, a videotape of the crime or a video-recorded confession by the killer. The new limitations make Maryland's death penalty law among the most restrictive in the country.

Maryland will be better off without the death penalty ("Senate may debate death penalty repeal," Feb. 26). Repeal would allow Maryland to develop policies that are more effective at preventing crime and helping victims' families. The flaws in capital punishment, which were reflected in the hearings of the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment, have been well researched and well known for decades: * It does not deter crime. * It costs much more than the alternatives. * It drags out the suffering of victims' families rather than bringing them closure.

The death penalty in the hands of politicians: Few things seem as twisted and as troubling as the matter of state-sponsored executions authorized by men and women with large nameplates pinned to their lapels. While in the ideal they might be devoted to public service and to representative democracy, what most of them seek, first and foremost, is name recognition and re-election. And in a nation as violent as ours, re-election has required being tough on crime, and being tough on crime has required support of capital punishment.

Execution isn't path to a peaceful society As Christians, church leaders and bishops in the Episcopal Church, we urge the General Assembly to act to abolish the death penalty ("Report fuels death debate," Dec. 13). As Christians, we are guided by the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Here he specifically rejects retribution by stating that even the teaching in the Old Testament of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is to be rejected in favor of the teaching that calls for reconciliation (Matthew, 6:38)

Two more members of a state commission reviewing capital punishment indicated yesterday that they will recommend keeping the death penalty in Maryland, but a majority of panelists still support abolishing the practice. At a meeting last night in Annapolis, a representative of Attorney General Douglas M. Gansler joined the minority that backs keeping the death penalty, slimming the abolitionists' margin to 13-8 on the 23-member commission. Also, Ocean City Police Chief Bernadette DiPino, a panelist who did not attend yesterday's meeting, told The Baltimore Sun she was leaning toward voting to retain capital punishment.

When the New Jersey legislature voted late last year to repeal the death penalty, it did so on the heels of a near-unanimous recommendation from a state commission that said capital punishment was too costly, too arbitrary and too tough on victims' families to justify the risk of an irreversible mistake. So when Maryland lawmakers created a panel to study the issue, death penalty opponents hoped it would produce a similar recommendation and provide the boost needed to repeal the death penalty law. Last week, they got that recommendation - but on a much closer vote than in New Jersey, where the margin was 12-1.

In a decision expected to clear the way for states to resume executions by lethal injection, the Supreme Court upheld yesterday Kentucky's execution procedures, which are used by nearly every state with a death penalty law, including Maryland. Executions across the country have been on hold since the high court agreed in September to hear the case of two Kentucky death row inmates who challenged the three-drug procedure, which is used to anesthetize, paralyze and stop the heart. Within hours of yesterday's ruling, the governor of Virginia announced that he was lifting his state's moratorium on executions, while several prosecutors and governors around the country said they would seek execution dates as quickly as the courts can set them.

On Monday, the House of Delegates passed a bill that would establish a Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment. The commission, which will have 19 members, is to issue a report by Dec. 15 of this year on at least seven recommendations. Guess what's at the top of the list of recommendations? You'd be right if you guessed "racial disparities," and you'd have guessed that even if you had just beamed in from Planet Dimwit. No. 2 on the list is "jurisdictional disparities." No. 3 is "socio-economic disparities," while "the risk of innocent people being executed" comes in at numero quatro.