By John Wagner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 11, 2008

Gov. Martin O'Malley tapped a former U.S. attorney general yesterday to lead a panel examining Maryland's death penalty, opening another chapter in the state's long-running legal and political drama over the issue.

Benjamin R. Civiletti, who served under President Jimmy Carter from 1979 to 1981, was introduced at an Annapolis news conference along with others chosen by O'Malley (D) and legislative leaders to serve on the 23-member Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment, which the General Assembly created this year.

The diverse group -- which includes law-enforcement officials, religious leaders and family members of murder victims -- is expected to make recommendations to the legislature before it reconvenes in January, and death penalty opponents try for the third year in a row since O'Malley's arrival to abolish capital punishment.

"I think the legislature will be very interested in hearing from this commission," said O'Malley, who has urged a deeply divided legislature to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Death penalty proponents did not criticize the commission directly yesterday but suggested that its aim was transparent.

"Obviously, there are some very good people who have been appointed to serve," said House Minority Leader Anthony J. O'Donnell (R-Calvert). "However, it has been my fear from the beginning that Governor O'Malley is using this as a pretense and justification to try to abolish the death penalty."

House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) praised the choice of Civiletti as chairman, saying his reputation as "a facilitator and a mediator" would help guide deliberations.

"In my 22 years in Annapolis, I don't think there's been anything debated more passionately," said Busch, who has supported capital punishment but expressed concerns about disparities in its application.

O'Malley's announcement came on the same day that he chose to highlight another public-safety priority: the creation of a single communications system that will allow state and local officials to talk to one another during emergencies, replacing a current patchwork of radio systems.

O'Malley said that other states have moved more quickly in this direction since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and that he wants the state to become a national leader.

The governor estimated that the effort could cost state and local governments anywhere from $400 million to $1 billion over the next five to eight years. Part of the cost will be determined by a major contract for which the state started soliciting proposals this week. Some of the money is being spent in budgets scattered across government agencies, O'Malley said.

"It's not a matter of lacking the technology," he said during a separate news conference in Howard County, where he was flanked by dozens of law-enforcement officials and emergency responders. "It's not a matter of the know-how."

With the state facing lean budgets, the cost of the initiative could generate intense discussion in the legislature. Another emotional debate over the death penalty is almost certain next year.

The state, in effect, has had a moratorium since December 2006, when the Court of Appeals ruled that the procedures for lethal injections had not been properly adopted. After months of delay, O'Malley announced in May that he had directed administration officials to start drafting new regulations, a process expected to take at least several months.

Civiletti, a lawyer whose practice areas include commercial litigation and white-collar crime, described himself as "not a particular expert on the death penalty."

"I come in with views, but they are not fixed views," he said in response to a reporter's question.

Civiletti's law firm, Venable LLP, has done work as recently as April for Maryland Citizens Against State Executions. In a legal brief prepared for the group, Venable lawyers argued that a court probably would not order O'Malley to issue new regulations that would enable executions to resume in Maryland.

Civiletti said yesterday that he was not aware his firm had done work for the anti-death penalty group, which sent a copy of the brief to O'Malley.