Death Row

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 the last of its four public hearings, the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment explored yesterday the risk of innocent people being executed - calling upon of one its members to tell the story of his own wrongful conviction. Former Maryland death row inmate Kirk Bloodsworth, part of the 23-member commission appointed by Gov. Martin O'Malley, told members about the post-conviction DNA tests that exonerated him in 1993 and eventually pointed to the real killer. He had served more than eight years in prison for the rape and murder of an Eastern Shore girl.

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.

Some death penalty opponents believe they must win the argument on moral grounds - that they have to convince the Maryland General Assembly, for instance, that capital punishment should be abolished because it's just morally wrong. For many Americans, it's the only argument necessary and the only one they offer, and they do so with the stridency approaching that of religious belief. While I appreciate the poetry of the moralizing abolitionists, and admit to having been in their ranks at one time, I realize that the moral argument doesn't work with everyone.

Washington -- Suggesting that they are deeply divided over the legality of execution procedures used by most states, the Supreme Court justices asked dozens of questions yesterday about the drugs used in lethal injections and how much risk of pain is permissible when putting a convicted killer to death. The questioning came during oral arguments in a Kentucky case that could decide whether widely used lethal injection rules violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

For the first time since the Supreme Court upheld Utah's use of a firing squad in 1878, the nation's highest court is preparing to weigh in on the legality of a particular method of execution. The justices are scheduled to hear arguments today in a case out of Kentucky that could decide whether the lethal injection procedures used by nearly every state with a death penalty law, including Maryland, amount to cruel and unusual punishment. But before the court can tackle that question, it must first resolve the narrower legal issue of how to evaluate whether a state's execution protocols - the series of steps that corrections officials take to administer lethal doses of three drugs intravenously - are unconstitutional.

Today, Maryland is in a unique position to get out of the business of executing prisoners. A de facto moratorium exists here, stemming from an appeals court decision that invalidated the state's protocols on administering the death penalty. And even if the irregularities in the protocols were fixed, it's unlikely any of the five men on death row would be executed, because Gov. Martin O'Malley adamantly opposes the death penalty. Even Scott D. Shellenberger, state's attorney for Baltimore County - which leads the state in death penalty cases - has pledged to revise his office's practice of seeking capital punishment in all eligible cases.

Sentencing for a convicted killer who was once on death row was postponed yesterday after the man said that his lawyers had coerced him to plead guilty in a prior plea agreement. John A. Miller IV, 35, was allowed to proceed with a motion to withdraw his guilty plea, effectively firing the public defenders who have represented him. Relatives of Shen Poehlman, the 17-year-old girl whom Miller was convicted of killing nearly a decade ago, were visibly upset when they learned that the sentencing process would be prolonged.