Death Row

"Kill the bastard. Somebody has to if I can't. " It's been a decade since those words flashed across Charles Poehlman's mind. He's in a better place now, he says, anger replaced by acceptance. He still wants the man who killed his 17-year-old daughter to die, but he's come to terms with the fact that the state of Maryland won't execute John A. Miller IV. But neither Poehlman nor Miller feels justice has been done. Poehlman believes Miller finagled a system that coddles criminals to draw out proceedings and escape the death penalty.

As Maryland's de facto moratorium on executions drags on and lawmakers in Annapolis prepare for another set of hearings in the years-long push by advocates to outlaw capital punishment, it is understandable that the families of those who were murdered by the five men on death row would be frustrated and angry. Phyllis Bricker, whose parents were murdered by death row inmate John Booth-El, gave voice to the anguish that has caused in a recent interview with The Sun's Julie Bykowicz : "There's been no closure, no justice.

Anything the state does that's related to the death penalty is bound to arouse the suspicions of partisans on both sides as they try to figure out whether it pushes Maryland's stalled capital punishment system toward revival or extinction. But the surprise move of the state's five death row inmates from the downtown Baltimore facility once known as Supermax to the North Branch Correctional Institute in Cumberland shouldn't arouse condemnation on either side. It simply makes sense. The circumstances give the shift a greater air of drama than it warrants.

The five men on Maryland's death row were quietly moved this week from the hulking Baltimore prison once known as Supermax to a Western Maryland facility hailed recently as one of the most technologically advanced maximum-security prisons in the United States. The transfer to the North Branch Correctional Institution near Cumberland was carried out amid such secrecy that even now state prison officials won't give any details — not even which day the condemned men were moved.

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.

T he 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.