Maryland Finally Abolishes the Death Penalty & Joins Civilized World // Here are the Democrats Who Voted Against Repeal

Today Maryland joined the civilized world and finally abolished its use of the death penalty. Last week the State Senate voted to repeal the death penalty (roll call here), and today the House of Delegates followed suit with a 82-56 vote in support of abolition.

It's about freaking time, people.

ON LIFE VS. DEATH, A SAD PARTY LINE VOTE - The death penalty repeal vote was (sadly) a mostly party line affair, with all but two Republican House members voting against the "pro-life" position. Only two Republican Delegates maintained consistency in their "pro-life" beliefs and joined Democrats in repealing executions: Susan Aumann and Bill Frank (both Catholic Republicans). In contrast, most Democrats voted to end state murder. But 18 Democrats joined the GOP (including one Charles Barkley from MoCo) and voted to continue using taxpayer dollars to pay state employees to kill people. You can see the Democratic Hall of Shame below. I also flagged the pro-death penalty Democrats who voted against marriage equality and the Dream Act. Interesting patterns:

GOP HOUSE MEMBERS WHO VOTED PRO-LIFE:

1. Aumann, Susan - Baltimore Co.
2. Frank, William - Baltimore Co.

DEMOCRATIC HOUSE MEMBERS WHO EMBRACE VIOLENCE:

1. Barkley, Charles - Montgomery
2. Beidle, Pamela - Anne Arundel - ( also voted against Dream Act )
3. Bohanan, John - St. Mary's - ( also voted against Dream Act )
4. Bromwell, Eric - Baltimore Co. - ( also voted against Dream Act )
5. Conway, Norm - Wicomico - ( also voted against Dream Act & Marriage Equality )
6. DeBoy, Steve - Baltimore Co. - ( also voted against Dream Act & Marriage Equality )
7. Donoghue, John - Washington - ( also voted against Dream Act & Marriage Equality )
8. James, Mary-Dulany - Harford - ( also voted against Dream Act & Marriage Equality )
9. Jameson, Sally - Charles - ( also voted against Dream Act & Marriage Equality )
10. Kelly, Kevin - Allegany - ( also voted against Dream Act & Marriage Equality )
11. Malone, Jim - Baltimore Co. - ( also voted against Dream Act )
12. Minnick, Joseph - Baltimore Co. - ( also voted against Dream Act & Marriage Equality )
13. Olszewski, John - Baltimore Co. - ( also voted against Dream Act )
14. Rudolph, David - Cecil - ( also voted against Dream Act )
15. Sophocleus, Theodore - Anne Arundel - ( also voted against Dream Act & Marriage Equality )
16. Weir, Michael - Baltimore Co. - ( also voted against Dream Act & Marriage Equality )
17. Wilson, C. T. - Charles - ( also voted against Marriage Equality )
18. Wood, John - St. Mary's - ( also voted against Dream Act & Marriage Equality )

Erin Cox from The Baltimore Sun Tweeted the unofficial roll call (see full vote below):

GOP NOT PLANNING ON PETITIONING EXECUTION BAN TO REFERENDUM - Now the death penalty repeal measure heads to Gov. Martin O'Malley's desk to be signed into law -- and believe it or not, The Washington Times reported this week that Republicans appear unlikely to petition the ban on executions to referendum (excerpt below):

WASHINGTON TIMES: Maryland Republicans might concede the fight over the state’s death penalty, saying that they are unlikely to mount a referendum effort as the House prepares to grant final passage to a repeal....

In recent years, outnumbered Republicans in Maryland have used online petitions to send several controversial Democratic proposals to referendum, but the lawmaker who helped lead those efforts says he doesn’t see it happening for the death penalty....

Delegate Neil C. Parrott said he hasn’t completely ruled out leading a petition drive, but that a campaign would face long odds and might not do much to affect policy in a state where recent laws have already made it extremely difficult for prosecutors to pursue executions.

Maryland Juice hopes that Parrott and his crew of petitioners hold to these statements, because right now the only other person who desires a death penalty referendum is Senate President Mike Miller.

WE MUST PRESERVE THIS SHAMEFUL HISTORY - Maryland Juice thinks that we need to preserve the evidence of our state's shameful past and make a museum out of our soon-to-be-defunct execution chambers:

Maryland Death Penalty Ban Expected to Pass Senate Judiciary Today // Sen. Bobby Zirkin Announces Support for Repeal (!)

Yesterday Maryland Juice reported that the Maryland Senate's judiciary committee (aka the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee) was deadlocked on death penalty repeal. We further noted that State Senator Bobby Zirkin, a Baltimore County Democrat, was the swing vote on the 11-member committee.

Amazingly, The Washington Post's John Wagner reported late last night that Sen. Bobby Zirkin has announced he will support repeal of the death penalty in Maryland! Check out this excerpt from the WaPo coverage:

WASHINGTON POST: Sen. Robert A. Zirkin (D-Baltimore County) said Wednesday night that he plans to vote in favor of repealing Maryland’s death penalty, which means the measure now has the support of a majority of members on a key committee.... A majority vote by the committee would allow the bill to move to the full Senate, where there appears to be enough votes for passage....

“From an emotional standpoint, I want to kill these people myself,” Zirkin said. “But that’s a different question than whether, legally, the state should be involved in their death....” Zirkin’s support provides a clearer path to passage for the legislation.

Original version of the repurposed photo above available at Maryland Reporter.

You can thank State Senator Bobby Zirkin at: 

bobby.zirkin@senate.state.md.us

Senator Zirkin's wife Tina also deserves some credit on this win. She's been lobbying her husband to support #MDrepeal. Thanks Tina!

STEP TWO: Let's gear up to pass death penalty repeal on the Senate Floor without amendments:

[ CONTACT YOUR STATE SENATORS ]

Virginia's Executioner Speaks Out: State Employee Paid to Kill 62 People Almost Kills Innocent Man // Meet Maryland Exoneree

CURIOUS ABOUT THE FACE OF DEATH PENALTY IN MARYLAND - In the last week, Maryland Juice has been hoping to find information about the state employees who run Maryland's death penalty system. I've been trying out to figure out how many people in total our state is paying to participate directly in executions, including the employees who prepare the gurney and execution chamber, procure or requisition the poisons used to kill the prisoner, and ultimately insert the needle and administer the lethal dose. This information is not easily found, so if anyone can point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it: david@marylandjuice.com. Indeed, I have been trying to imagine the faces of Maryland's bureaucratic executioners, and it is making me really curious to see who it is that we last paid to do the killing in our state.

TWEETCHAT TUE 2/12 AT NOON - In the meantime, if you are curious about some aspect of the death penalty in Maryland, Equal Justice USA and Amnesty International are hosting a Tweetchat to answer questions at noon tomorrow (Tuesday, February 12, 2013). Just follow the #EndMDDP hashtag to join the conversation:

Join us tomorrow at noon for a tweetchat on #MDRepeal. Follow #EndMDDP tomorrow at 12pm to follow and participate! #DeathPenalty

VIRGINIA'S EXECUTIONER SPEAKS OUT ABOUT HIS 62 KILLINGS & AND THE INNOCENT GUY HE ALMOST KILLED - Given my recent curiosities I was intrigued to wake up this morning and discover that Virginians now know exactly who has been doing their killings for them. The Washington Post had a very worthwhile profile piece on the state employee who served as executioner for 62 Virginia inmates. The former corrections officer is now opposed to the death penalty and faces feelings of guilt for the more than five dozen premeditated killings he committed. Apparently he came within days of executing an innocent person. I hope you'll check out the fascinating full piece (excerpt below):

WASHINGTON POST:  Jerry Givens executed 62 people....  “If you knew going out there that raping and killing someone had the consequence of the death penalty, then why are you going to do it?” Givens asked. “I considered it suicide....”

Ultimately, though, it was a man he didn’t execute who would make the biggest impression. Earl Washington Jr. was sentenced to death in 1984 in the rape and killing of a 19-year-old mother of three in Culpeper.

Washington, who has an IQ of about 69, admitted to the killing, although many of his answers were inconsistent with the facts of the case. Just days before his scheduled execution in 1985, lawyers secured a stay based on doubts about his guilt.... After testing with a more advanced forensic science, Washington was cleared and eventually granted an absolute pardon, making him the first person on Virginia’s death row to be exonerated by DNA evidence....

The DNA testing “was a scientific process totally outside the system that said, ‘You’ve got the wrong guy,’ ” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center and an opponent of the death penalty. “The fact that you had the entirely wrong person was a revelation to some people.”

The man who would have been Washington’s executioner was one of them. Givens said the case shook his faith in the justice system. He came within days of putting an innocent man to death. “If I execute an innocent person, I’m no better than the people on death row,” Givens said....

NEW YORK TIMES PROFILES MARYLAND DEATH ROW EXONEREE - A fitting complement to today's Washington Post piece is a  recent New York Times' recent profile of Maryland death row exoneree Kirk Bloodsworth. Check out the full NYT profile online (excerpt below):

NEW YORK TIMES: Twenty years ago, [Kirk Noble Bloodsworth] walked out of a Maryland prison, the first inmate in the nation to be sentenced to death and then exonerated by DNA....

In 1984, he was a former Marine with no criminal record who had followed his father’s profession as a waterman on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. A woman glimpsed on television a police sketch of the suspect in the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl outside Baltimore. She thought it looked like her neighbor Kirk, and she called the police.

From there, with the police and prosecutors under intense pressure to solve the crime, it was a short route to trial, conviction and a death sentence.... “I was accused of the most brutal murder in Maryland history,” Mr. Bloodsworth, now 52, told the church audience. “It took the jury two and a half hours to send me to the gas chamber.”

Only after nine years in the state’s most decrepit and violent prisons did Mr. Bloodsworth, through his own perseverance and some aggressive lawyering, manage to get the still-novel DNA test that finally proved his innocence in 1993.... 

Prosecutors and jurors ignored glaring problems with witnesses — two were boys who did not pick Mr. Bloodsworth out of a lineup — and dismissed five alibi witnesses who testified that he was home at the time of the murder.

“The adversarial system doesn’t know who’s guilty or who’s innocent,” Mr. Bloodsworth said. “The millstone does not know who’s under it....”

More on the movement to ban state executions in Maryland soon!

CD6: DCCC Robocall Attacks Rep. Roscoe Bartlett for Ties to Rep. Todd Akin's Rape Views // Taped Call Tells Voters to Call Bartlett

Maryland Juice recently printed a series of press releases attacking Rep. Roscoe Bartlett for co-sponsoring controversial laws with Rep. Todd Akin. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is now launching a robocall attack into Maryland's 6th Congressional District about the matter. According to Slate.com, this is a national campaign targeting a number of vulnerable U.S. House Republicans. See the DCCC press release and robocall script below:

PRESS RELEASE

DCCC Launches New Advertising Linking Congressman Bartlett

To Congressman Todd Akin's Extremism

JuiceBlender: Federal Court Kills MoCo & Baltimore Abortion Laws, Police Union Referendum Rejected, More Costco Debate

Below Maryland Juice flags a few stories and updates you may have missed, starting with news coverage of a recent legal battle in the pro-choice vs. anti-abortion debate. Some of these controversies are not yet settled, so we'll let you know how they go (see below):

JUICE #1: FEDERAL COURT OVERTURNS MOCO & BALTIMORE REGULATION OF ANTI-CHOICE CLINICS - In 2010 the Montgomery County Council passed a law intending to prevent anti-abortion centers from providing misleading information to visitors. The law, which was proposed by former Councilmember Duchy Trachtenberg, required the centers to post signs noting that they did not employ staff with medical licenses and to therefore consider seeing a medical professional. Baltimore City around the same time also adopted a similar law. The Washington Post reports that a federal appellate court struck down both the MoCo and B'more laws (excerpt below):

Washington Post: Maryland Missed An Opportunity to Abolish the Death Penalty // Connecticut Set to End State Killings

RETWEET

The Washington Post yesterday issued an editorial lamenting that lawmakers once again failed to abolish the death penalty in "The Free State." Maryland Juice seconds their motion for action to end the practice. Their commentary flags many of the major policy problems that arise when allowing the state to execute people (see excerpt below):

WASHINGTON POST: Connecticut is set to become what Maryland should have been: the most recent state to abolish capital punishment.

With the expected signature of Gov. Dan Malloy (D) within the next few days, Connecticut would become the 17th state to repeal the death penalty and the fifth in the past five years....