"NAACP head calls for death penalty abolition this year," is the title of Michael Dresser's Baltimore Sun report.
Ben Jealous, the national NAACP president, came to Annapolis Tuesday to call on Maryland legislators to make this the year the state does away with the death penalty.
Flanked by several legislators, Jealous said he intends to return to Annapolis repeatedly through the 90-day legislative session that starts Wednesday to work for repeal.
Death penalty opponents have come close in recent years to securing the votes needed to remove capital punishment from the books, but each time have fallen a few votes short.
This year, they are hoping that lingering doubts about the guilt or innocence of Troy Davis, a 42-year-old who was convicted of murder in 1981 and executed in Georgia in September, will give fresh impetus to their efforts.
Jealous, who noted that he will soon move to a new House in Silver Spring, said he plans to meet with Gov. Martin O'Malley soon to urge him to step up efforts to secure the votes needed for repeal. O'Malley is an opponent of the death penalty but has been reluctant to make repeal a priority since an effort at full abolition fell short in 2009. He has talked about possibly using the state budget to remove funding to administer capital punishment, but that would not be a permanent change to Maryland law.
"NAACP president Jealous calls for abolishing death penalty in Md; set sights on Conn., Calif.," is the AP report, via the Washington Post.
NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said Tuesday that Maryland needs to abolish capital punishment to help lead the way in ending it in other states, and he believes the September execution of Troy Davis in Georgia last year has sparked greater interest in ending the death penalty.
“People in this country care about fairness,” Jealous said at a news conference in Annapolis with other civil rights leaders and state lawmakers opposed to capital punishment. “They’re outraged about what happened to Troy Davis. They want to see our country join the rest of the western world and abolish the death penalty. In order to get there, Maryland has to do it.”
And:
Some Maryland lawmakers will seek a repeal in the legislative session that begins Wednesday. They say they have a majority of support in both the House and Senate, but they say they are one vote shy on a Senate committee to move the bill to a full vote.
“We’ve abolished it in Illinois in recent years; we’ve abolished it in New Jersey in recent years; we’ve abolished it in New Mexico in recent years, and there is no reason why it has not been abolished here, except for a few politicians who have gotten in the way,” Jealous said.
Jealous said the Baltimore-based NAACP is focusing on two other states where they believe there is opportunity for repeal, Connecticut and California.
“Even in Georgia, people see an opportunity to start sort of chipping away at the death penalty in a way that we haven’t seen, because the state is still on fire” over the Davis case, Jealous said.
Related posts are in the abolition and state legislation indexes.
The Baltimore Sun also reports, "Opening of death penalty trial in prison death delayed." It's by Andrea F. Siegel.
With jury selection extending past last week, opening statements that had been scheduled for Monday in the death penalty trial of a prisoner charged with killing a correctional officer are expected to take place Wednesday.
Lee Edward Stephens, 32, is one of two life-term prisoners accused of fatally stabbing David McGuinn in July 2006 as he walked on a skinny catwalk along cells at the Maryland House of Correction. The slaying was among the main reasons the prison, in Jessup, was closed.
The case ultimately could test the validity of the state's 2009 death penalty law changes, reserve the death penalty for murders in which there is a videotaped confession, a video recording of the crime, or DNA or other biological evidence linking the defendant to the crime. In this case, prosecutors said they have DNA. The trial is expected to last seven weeks.
Earlier coverage of the Maryland trial begins at the link.
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