Kill Maryland's Death Penalty

Mrs. Schieber experienced firsthand what the death penalty system does to victims' families. Today, she is volunteering countless hours urging legislators in Annapolis to end executions in Maryland to ensure that no more families will have the pain of their losses compounded by the difficulties of capital punishment.

The issue is now before the legislature. To those lawmakers who have supported capital punishment in the past, please consider all that we have learned in recent years about how drastically it fails in practice. Around the country, Americans are moving away from the death penalty. A recent New Jersey commission recommended replacing the death penalty with life without parole because it simply could not come up with a way to make the system work both fairly and effectively.

It's time for Maryland to take heed and end capital punishment here.

-- Harry R. Hughes

Denton, Md.

The writer, a Democrat, was governor of Maryland from 1979 to 1987.