Saturday's Washington Post reported, "Ehrlich takes issue with O'Malley's delays on death penalty." It's written by John Wagner.
Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) has repeatedly fallen short in his attempts to persuade lawmakers to abolish capital punishment. But as he nears the end of his term, O'Malley is close to achieving through delay and inertia what he could not change in the law.
Three-and-a-half years after the state's highest court halted use of the death penalty on a technicality, O'Malley has yet to implement regulations required for executions to resume. Although O'Malley says his administration is working diligently in that direction, advocates on both sides of the issue say they strongly doubt that any of Maryland's five condemned prisoners will be put to death before the governor stands for reelection this fall.
With jobs and the economy dominating the political debate, there is little evidence that O'Malley's posture on the death penalty has hurt him politically to this point. But his leading opponent, former governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), said that he plans to make it an issue, accusing O'Malley and other death penalty opponents of "shenanigans" to avoid carrying out the law.
"This is the kind of thing that makes people cynical about the criminal justice system," said Ehrlich, who presided over the state's last execution, in 2005. "Governor O'Malley took an oath to uphold the law. He's certainly violating the spirit of it."
The debate in Maryland, one of 35 states with a death penalty statute, comes as capital punishment continues to draw attention across the country. Executions nationwide increased somewhat last year, but the number of new death sentences handed down fell to the lowest total since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
O'Malley bristled at Ehrlich's characterization, attributing part of the delay to a legislative review committee that six months ago raised numerous questions about regulations drafted by the administration, including its choice of a three-drug cocktail for lethal injections. Administration officials said a formal response was mailed to the committee Friday morning.
"We are following the process for putting the new regulations in place," O'Malley said. "Everything about the death penalty is cumbersome and can be slow."
Contrast that report with, "Drop in crime might be a boost for O'Malley," by Aaron C. Davis, in today's Post.
Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley is scheduled to announce Monday that the state recorded fewer violent crimes last year than at any point since 1979 and that the overall number of crimes dipped to an all-time low since Maryland police began uniformly reporting them more than 35 years ago.
By another key measure -- the likelihood that a resident will fall victim to murder, rape, robbery or violent assault -- Maryland is expected to drop out of the nation's 10 most dangerous states for the first time in more than two decades.
Maryland's improving public safety record stands out even amid a national phenomenon of falling crime rates, including a precipitous drop last year in the number of homicides across the greater Washington region.
The good news comes at an opportune time for O'Malley: at the outset of his reelection campaign. Over the coming months, O'Malley (D), who won the governor's mansion in part on a reputation as Baltimore's tough-on-crime mayor, is expected to reclaim the mantle of crime fighter.
But with crime rates falling fast nationwide, assessing how much credit O'Malley deserves for Maryland's record lows remains a tough task. Recent high-profile crimes, including the killing of an 11-year-old Eastern Shore girl in December that exposed major gaps in the state's supervision of sex predators and the slaying in February of a teacher at a state-run juvenile detention facility in Prince George's County, have provided entry points for O'Malley's challenger, former governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), to question the state's progress.
During this year's General Assembly session, Ehrlich criticized O'Malley and the state's Democratic-controlled legislature for failing to more quickly tighten sex-offender rules. Last week, Ehrlich accused O'Malley and powerful Democrats opposed to capital punishment of "shenanigans" to circumvent the state's death penalty laws, effectively maintaining a de facto moratorium on executions for Maryland's five death-row inmates.
In an interview Saturday, O'Malley said he was looking forward to making the case that his administration's award-winning tactics aimed at cracking down on violent repeat offenders, tightening parole and probation standards, targeting at-risk youths and clearing the state's backlog of unanalyzed DNA samples have made Marylanders safer.
"They haven't always made headlines, but there's a lot of things that we have been doing over the last four years on a statewide basis that have helped local law enforcement prevent crime, solve crime and therefore save lives," O'Malley said. "It's time to report back to the public the things that we're doing well."
Earlier coverage from Maryland begins with this post.
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