"First death penalty hearing held," is Jennifer McMenamin's report in the Baltimore Sun.
A state commission appointed to study the death penalty began its work yesterday by hearing testimony on statistical evidence of racial, geographic and socioeconomic disparities in different states' imposition of death sentences.
University professors, a former judge and statisticians from across the country appeared before the panel, which is assigned to offer recommendations to the General Assembly to ensure the administration of capital punishment in Maryland is "free from bias and error" and capable of achieving "fairness and accuracy."
In the most emotional testimony of the more than four-hour hearing, the brother of the Unabomber and the brother of a Marine convicted of killing an elderly woman during a flashback from his service in Vietnam offered accounts of their starkly different experiences with the criminal justice system.
And:
Established this year by the state legislature, the 23-member commission is charged with examining a number of issues, including disparities in the application of the death penalty, the cost differential between litigating prolonged capital punishment cases and life imprisonment, and the impact of DNA evidence.
Led by Benjamin R. Civiletti, a former U.S. attorney general who served under President Jimmy Carter, the commission includes a police chief, a former death-row inmate who was exonerated by DNA evidence, a rabbi, a bishop, three family members of murder victims, several legislators and a county prosecutor who has handled capital cases.
The commission must submit a final report on its findings and recommendations by Dec. 15.
There has been an effective ban on Maryland's use of its death chamber since December 2006, when its highest court ruled that the state's execution protocols were improperly developed without legislative oversight or public input.
In May, Gov. Martin O'Malley took the first step toward ending that moratorium, ordering the drafting of new procedures for executing inmates by lethal injection. That process could be completed by the end of the year.
The governor, who opposes capital punishment, had held off ordering new lethal injection protocols to give lawmakers another chance during this year's legislative session to consider repealing the death penalty. But a bill to replace capital punishment with life without parole stalled in a Senate committee for a second year in a row.
In the Washington Post, "Panel Hears of Inequities in Death Penalty," is John Wagner's report.
Yesterday, University of Maryland criminologist Raymond Paternoster revisited for the panel the findings of a 2004 study that he said revealed "tremendous variability" among Maryland counties in their pursuit of the death penalty. Prosecutors in Baltimore County were about 13 times more likely to pursue the death penalty as those in the city of Baltimore, about five times more likely as those in Montgomery County and twice as likely as prosecutors in Prince George's County, the study found.
The findings also suggested less pronounced disparities when the race of the victim was taken into account, with prosecutors more likely to seek the death penalty when whites were killed by blacks.
Paternoster's study grew out of a previous moratorium on capital punishment in the state imposed by then-Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D). Since the findings were released, the state has executed two death-row inmates, both during the tenure of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R). But the study has generated renewed interest since the election of O'Malley, who opposes the death penalty and tapped former U.S. attorney general Benjamin R. Civiletti to lead the panel.
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The most gripping testimony yesterday was offered by David Kaczynski, brother of the Unabomber, and Bill Babbitt, whose brother also was a convicted killer. Both men turned in their brothers to law enforcement officials.
Kaczynski contrasted the case of his brother, Theodore J. Kaczynski, a Harvard-educated serial killer whose life was spared in a plea deal, with that of Babbitt's brother, Manny Babbitt, a paranoid schizophrenic Vietnam veteran who was executed for his crime.
"The death penalty compounds the tragedy of murder by harming another set of families," Babbitt said. "Please consider that harm when you consider the role of the death penalty in Maryland."
Earlier coverage is here.
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