Bill Backs Commission To Examine Issue Again

With legislation to repeal Maryland's death penalty facing long odds this legislative session, some capital punishment opponents, including Gov. Martin O'Malley (D), are voicing support for a bill that would establish a high-profile commission to study the issue for the remainder of the year.

Sen. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Montgomery) said a commission could provide "a candid assessment" of the merits of the death penalty, including the costs associated with imposing executions, at a time when "there are tremendous changes in public opinion" on capital punishment.

The idea was met with skepticism by death penalty supporters, who view the study as another potential delay in resuming executions.

Maryland has had an effective moratorium on the death penalty since December 2006, when the state's highest court ruled that the state's procedures for lethal injections had not been properly adopted. For executions to resume, the O'Malley administration would have to issue new regulations, a step the governor has resisted.

O'Malley spokesman Rick Abbruzzese said O'Malley would support Raskin's bill to establish a commission if legislation to repeal the death penalty failed. Both pieces of legislation are scheduled for hearings today in a Senate committee.

Sen. Lisa A. Gladden (D-Baltimore), the lead sponsor of the repeal bill, acknowledged this week that her legislation has little hope of passing. The bill fell one vote short last year in the Judicial Proceedings Committee, the membership of which has not changed.

"It really appears to be the exact same scenario as last year," said Sen. Alex X. Mooney (R-Frederick), who was considered the swing vote on the committee last session.

Sen. Brian E. Frosh (D-Montgomery), the committee's chairman, said he thinks that establishing a commission is "more of a possibility," reasoning that one of the panel's death penalty supporters might be persuaded to allow a study of the issue.

The cost of imposing the death penalty is one issue ripe for examination, Raskin said. He pointed to a study scheduled to be formally released today by the Abell Foundation of Baltimore. The study, which was conducted for the foundation by the Urban Institute, says costs associated with a death sentence are about three times as high as a comparable non-death penalty case, even taking into account the cost of long-term incarceration.

The study analyzed 1,136 Maryland capital murder cases decided from 1978 to 1999 and developed an estimate of how much more was spent on those cases, compared with non-death-penalty cases. The study concluded that the cost of imposing the death penalty in Maryland has been at least $186 million above what the state would have spent without a death penalty.

The state has executed five people since 1978; five inmates are on death row.

Prosecutors chose to seek the death penalty in 162 cases from 1978 to 1999, succeeding in 56 cases, the study said. The vast majority of those sentences were eventually reversed, however, as part of a lengthy and costly appeals process.

Sen. James Brochin (D-Baltimore County), a death penalty supporter on the Judicial Proceedings Committee, said he would think about supporting a commission that narrowly examined the issue of the death penalty's cost.

Raskin's bill, however, calls for studying "all aspects of capital punishment as currently administered in the state," including whether the process is discriminatory at any point and whether "the death penalty is consistent with evolving standards of decency."

"Didn't we just study this three years ago?" Brochin said when told about the bill yesterday. He was referring to a study, authorized in 2000 by then-Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D), of racial disparity and fairness issues related to the death penalty.

The study, released in 2003, concluded that the race of the offender did not have a significant impact on the process but that the jurisdiction where the murder was prosecuted was relevant.

Mooney said he considered another study to be "probably a delaying tactic."

"It's been studied a lot, so I don't know if that's crucial," he said.