Death Penalty Bears Down on O'Malley, Kaine

A dozen states, including Maryland, have suspended executions amid questions about the use of lethal injection. And last month, a New Jersey commission recommended that the state abandon capital punishment altogether, an idea embraced by the state's Democratic governor, Jon S. Corzine.

Anita Dunn, a national Democratic consultant, said "a sea shift" started in 2000 when Illinois's Republican governor, George Ryan, imposed a moratorium after a series of cases in which people sentenced to death had been wrongly convicted.

Opposition to the death penalty "used to be used against Democrats to show they were out-of-touch liberals," said Dunn, whose recent clients included O'Malley's Democratic primary opponent, former Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan.

Dunn said using the death penalty against a Democrat like O'Malley would be difficult because the former Baltimore mayor "built his career as a crime fighter."

Unlike Kaine, who has called his Catholic faith the underpinning of his opposition to the death penalty, O'Malley has not cast his opposition in religious terms. "Certainly on an issue like this, there's absolutely a moral aspect to it," he said. "But there are good people on both sides of this debate."

During last year's campaign in Maryland, neither Duncan nor then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) sought to use O'Malley's views on the death penalty against him, and the issue rarely came up. O'Malley offered his views when asked, but he did not make any promises about repealing the death penalty.

Aides say O'Malley likely would not have joined the debate so early in his term if not for a December court ruling that effectively halts executions until the state adopts new regulations on lethal injection. The ruling emboldened death penalty opponents, who introduced legislation last month that would replace the death penalty with life without parole.

Even with O'Malley's involvement, some supporters of a repeal are skeptical that it could survive a likely filibuster on the Senate floor -- if it gets that far.

"On the death penalty, I don't think people are persuadable or malleable," said Sen. Brian E. Frosh (D-Montgomery), chairman of the Judicial Proceedings Committee.

If the legislation fails, the short-term future of Maryland's death penalty is likely to rest squarely on O'Malley.

Under the court ruling, executions cannot resume until his administration drafts new regulations or until the legislature passes a bill allowing executions without new regulations. There is widespread speculation that O'Malley may decide not to put forward regulations, leaving a de facto moratorium in place as long as he is in office. He declined to discuss that prospect yesterday.

Capital punishment has also been a sensitive subject for Kaine, Virginia's first Catholic governor.