"New state death penalty restrictions take effect," is the title of Liam Farrell's report for the Capital of Annapolis. It appeared in Thursday's newspaper.
Getting a death sentence in Maryland becomes even more difficult today as tough evidentiary standards passed by the General Assembly last session take effect.
Under the new law, capital punishment can be imposed only in cases with a videotaped confession, or in which biological, DNA or videotaped evidence conclusively links a defendant to a murder.
Cases relying solely on eyewitness testimony would be ineligible.
The new standards are the result of a three-year effort by Gov. Martin O'Malley to get a divided legislature to repeal capital punishment. The governor labeled this outcome a start in changing a flawed system.
But as Maryland uses capital punishment rarely - only five people have been executed since 1978 - the law probably won't do much to change the status quo, said Frank Weathersbee, the state's attorney for Anne Arundel County.
"In the end, it probably won't mean much difference," he said. Maryland is "certainly not Florida, Virginia or Texas."
There could be cases in which even the testimony of substantial numbers of eyewitnesses is not enough to secure the death penalty, Weathersbee said.
"The law, I think, was passed more for political reasons," he said. "They got a version that has a lot of loopholes."
For the near future, any further legislative action on the death penalty is uncertain.
After holding off in the hope of getting a repeal, O'Malley's administration in June issued new lethal injection regulations to a legislative committee, the first step in ending a de facto moratorium that has angered some prosecutors and lawmakers.
The Gazette of Gaithersburg today has, "Law could cut number of death penalty case," written by Erin Cunningham.
If Maryland's new death penalty law had been in place in 1984, it's unlikely that John Booth-el would be scheduled to die.
If the law had taken effect in 1998 instead of Thursday, Jody Miles, a rural farmer-turned-killer, would not be appealing a jury's decision that he should die for his crimes.
Jane Henderson, executive director of the nonprofit Maryland Citizens Against State Executions, said it's possible that Booth-el, Miles and the rest of the five men sitting on Maryland's death row would be facing life in prison instead of lethal injection if the new death penalty restrictions had been in place at the time of their trials.
In what is being called one of the most restrictive death penalty laws in the country, Maryland's new law requires prosecutors to provide DNA evidence, a videotaped confession or video linking defendants to the crime in a death penalty case. The state no longer will be able to rely solely on eyewitness evidence to convict a defendant.
Since 1978, when the death penalty was reinstated, five people have been put to death in Maryland.
Just as old cases could have had different outcomes, prosecutors and lawmakers say the new law is likely to affect future cases. They say the law was meant to limit the number of innocent people sentenced to death, but will reduce the number of cases in which the state seeks the death penalty at all.
However, the real effect of the new law is unclear and will be left up to the courts and their interpretation, said Katy O'Donnell, chief of the aggravated homicide division of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender.
"I think it will severely limit the number of cases that are now eligible for the death penalty," added Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott D. Shellenberger. "The new restrictions just create additional hurdles for the prosecutor to have to leap over to pursue a death penalty case."
In fact, the new law already has kept Baltimore County from seeking death for an alleged murderer.
"Typically, we do probably three death penalty cases in a given year," Shellenberger said. "We have zero pending. We saw the change in the spring and were looking at our cases with those limitations in mind."
Shellenberger asked for death in 2008 for Juvon Harris, who was charged with a murder that took place the prior year in a Baltimore County parking lot. The case was postponed a number of times, and a trial was set to begin when the new statute passed. Certain the case would be tied up for years with appeals and litigation if he continued to seek death, Shellenberger took a plea from the defendant, securing a speedy resolution for the victim's family.
Harris is now serving a life sentence.
Raquel Guillory, a spokeswoman for the Attorney General's Office, said the new law would apply to cases that have not yet gone to trial.
Earlier coverage of the new law begins here.
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