"More death penalty talk in Md.," is the AP report today via the Washington Post. Here's an extended excerpt:
Within a month, a state panel will take up proposed rules on how lethal injections are administered in Maryland, a lawmaker who co-chairs the committee said Monday.
State Sen. Paul Pinsky, D-Prince George's, said in an interview he believes the General Assembly's Joint Committee on Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review could hold a hearing and vote on the state's execution protocols.
"We are going to take it up in some way, shape, or form, I expect, over the next month," Pinsky said.
Capital punishment has been on hold since the state's highest court ruled in late 2006 that the committee hadn't properly approved Maryland's lethal injection protocols.
Pinsky said on the Senate floor that he had spoken to the panel's other co-chair, Delegate Anne Healey, D-Prince George's, and that there would be a committee meeting later this month or early next month on a "controversial issue before us." Pinsky said in an interview after session that the death penalty protocols are the other issue.
Pinsky and Healey oppose the death penalty.
Gov. Martin O'Malley, also a death penalty opponent, submitted new protocols for review in June 2009. They came after legislation he backed to repeal capital punishment failed. The committee, however, found several flaws with the proposal, including a lack of detailed medical training requirements for executioners to ensure the state doesn't have a failed lethal injection attempt. Healey and Pinsky asked for more details.
The O'Malley administration submitted protocols again in November, after time on the first proposed changes expired without panel action.
The Washington Post's John Wagner reported, "Md. again looking at death penalty," in the paper's Sunday edition.
Maryland lawmakers, who during Gov. Martin O'Malley's first term repeatedly debated whether to abolish the death penalty, are wrestling with a far different proposition at the outset of his second: whether to start using it again.
Maryland Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) said he will push for action in coming weeks on regulations needed to resume executions in the state.
Use of the death penalty was halted by the state's highest court in December 2006, the month before O'Malley (D) took office, pending new regulations from the administration spelling out procedures for lethal injection and other issues.
O'Malley instead lobbied the legislature to repeal capital punishment, waiting until 2009 - after those efforts fell short for a third year in a row - to propose new regulations. A legislative review panel headed by two Democrats opposed to capital punishment has yet to take action on the proposal, which they say is flawed.
"To allow this to continue to sit in the drawer is to make a mockery of the democratic and legislative process," Miller, a capital punishment supporter, said in an interview last week. "We swear to uphold the law of the state, and the death penalty is the law."
O'Malley said he, too, thinks the legislative panel "should do something one way or another on this" and acknowledged it is possible that executions could resume during his second four-year term, which starts Wednesday.
And:
Although the legislature stopped short of repealing the death penalty in 2009, it passed a bill tightening evidentiary standards in capital cases.
To be eligible for the death penalty, there must be biological or DNA evidence, a videotaped confession or a videotape linking the defendant to the crime. If the standards are not met, prosecutors can seek life without parole.
Zirkin, who helped craft the compromise, said in an interview last week that he sees no reason to revisit that.
"I think what we did is very good," he said. "I think what we did should be a model for other states."
Earlier coverage of lethal injection regulations in Maryland, at the link.
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