LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OFMARYLAND, INC.

106-B South Street, Annapolis MD 21401

Tel. 410-269-0232

email: lwvmd@verizon.net web page:www.lwvmd.org

TO: MEMBERS OF THE JUDICIAL PROCEEDINGS COMMITTEE

RE: SB279 - CRIMINAL LAW – DEATH PENALTY – REPEAL

POSITION: STRONG SUPPORT

By: Marcia D. Reinke, Baltimore County and LWVMD State Board

League of Women Voters members from all over Maryland participated in a study of the death penalty in 2003-2005, arriving at an overwhelming consensus that it should be abolished. This consensus for abolition, which was subsequently adopted by the League of Women Voters of the United States, has now been buttressed by the even more extensive and documented study by the legislature’s own Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment.

The League presumes the Committee has all read the Commission’s Report and is aware of its findings that Maryland’s capital punishment law is tainted by racial and jurisdictional disparities; that the cost of prosecuting a death penalty case exceeds the cost of a case calling for incarceration without parole even when the costs of incarceration are factored in; that there is a risk of executing the innocent; that there is no persuasive evidence that the death penalty deters homicides; that DNA evidence is not available in most cases; and that victim’s families suffer more during death penalty cases with their endless appeals.

The League study, unlike the Commission’s, also looked outside Maryland. Updated, its findings include:

• 36 states have a death penalty; 14 do not. The high execution states are in the south; the lowest in the northeast and west. The no-death-penalty states have lower murder rates.

• Internationally, 62 countries, including the U.S.A., have a death penalty while 135 have abolished it, either in law or in practice. In the Western Hemisphere, all the South American countries, Mexico and Canada have done away with capital punishment, leaving only us and a handful of Caribbean and Central American nations. All the countries of the European Union, plus Turkey, Ukraine, Australia and New Zealand have abolished the death penalty, and even the Russian Federation has abolished it in practice, not having executed anyone in 10 years.

• Our retention of the death penalty has not only resulted in a refusal to extradite persons who would face capital punishment here, but has been a focus of international criticism for violating human rights.