ANNAPOLIS – An emergency bill to stop state executions was introduced in the Maryland House late Wednesday on the heels of a study revealing that the state’s use of the ultimate penalty showed racial bias.
Outgoing Gov. Parris N. Glendening issued a moratorium on executions until University of Maryland researchers were finished with the study – released Tuesday. However, incoming Gov. Robert Ehrlich has said he would lift the moratorium.
On Thursday, the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee listened to professor Raymond Paternoster present the findings of the study.
“We can’t dispute that blacks who slay whites are at a greater risk (of execution). . . what we need to know is what that means,” Paternoster said.
What that means is that race matters, said Delegate Salima S. Marriott, D- Baltimore, who introduced the bill.
“The report indicates that we need to have continuous dialogue,” said Marriott, chairwoman of the Baltimore delegation. “A pattern of racial disparity has long plagued Maryland’s death penalty. This issue of racial justice can not be ignored.”
As for persuading Gov.-elect Ehrlich not to lift the ban, Sen. Ralph M. Hughes, D-Baltimore, said all the committee can do is try to get new legislation through the entire General Assembly.
“I think this issue needs to continue to be looked at,” Hughes said. “I don’t think the (findings) change many minds. They haven’t had time to digest this and people already have their minds made up,” he said.
While he favors keeping the moratorium, Sen. John A. Giannetti Jr., D- Prince George’s, said his committee is unlikely to spearhead any changes to the current death penalty law.
“There are a lot of unanswered questions and we need to move slowly on this,” Giannetti said. “It is upsetting to me about the disparities in how the death penalty is applied.”
The data issued by the study provide a solid foundation to examine the application of death sentences, according to Katy O’Donnell of the Capital Defense Unit of the Maryland Public Defenders Office.
“The results are absolutely valid. We have never had this at our disposal,” O’Donnell said. “It’s a deeply disturbing finding and certainly an important critical study,” she said.
Not all present at the meeting thought the study results were absolute.
“The conclusion I’m drawing from this is that the communities predominately African-American and where the majority of victims are African- American are not seeking the death penalty,” said Sen. Nancy Jacobs, R-Cecil. “I think civil rights activists would be up in arms about this.”
Explaining that he was not a constitutional lawyer, but rather a social scientist and criminologist who merely found data and presented it, Paternoster explained to the committee his doubts about the current system.
“The death penalty is the state’s ultimate sanction, and if we keep it I think this should be continuously monitored,” he said. “I started as a proponent of the death penalty, but am struck by our inhumanity.”
The study was ordered in response to a 1996 review revealing a high number of blacks sentenced to death and a low number of prisoners whose victims were black sentenced to death.
Conducted over two-and-a-half years, the study examined records for nearly 6,000 homicide prosecutions where the death penalty might have been applied between 1978 – when the law took effect – and 1999, making it the state’s most comprehensive study of the application of the death penalty.
In 1,311 instances where a crime was death penalty eligible, 180 cases went to trial resulting in 76 death sentences.
When the race of both the victim and offender are examined together the disparities begin to surface. The study showed, blacks who kill whites are two times more likely to get a death sentence as whites who kill whites, and that blacks who kill whites are four times as likely to get a death sentence as blacks who kill blacks.