Soccer Dad

Killing logic

Murders in Maryland from 1980 - 2007 - 13799

Murderer's executed since the late 1970's - 5

Ratio of executions to murders: ~ 1:2760

Odds of winning a 4 way box in Maryland's Pick 4 lottery: 1:2500 (A $1 bet returns $1200.)

Maryland's General Assembly and Governor are once again abdicating their responsibility to govern and ceding their authority rather than address a controversial issue on their own. First it was with slots where they threw a constitutional amendment to the electorate on the topic. Now to give them cover for abolishing the death penalty, Governor O'Malley constituted a commission to deem capital punishment a bad idea. As expected this past week the commission came to the foreordained conclusion.

The Washington Post, of course, hailed this conclusion, not because it makes any sense, but because the conclusion is consistent with the editorial position of the Washington Post.

So among the arguments the Post makes in support of the commission's foreordained conclusion is:

The death penalty appears not to deter murders.

Well, duh. (I've been saying that a lot lately.)

My guess is that if the chances of being executed within two years of conviction were somewhat closer to 1 instead of the chances of winning $1200 from the lottery, we'd see a pretty clear deterrent effect. (I should point out that the chances of being executed are at all, not within two years.) In other words if the chances of being executed for murder were more certain and not for some remote time in the future, I don't think that statement would be accurate.

Here's another problem according to the Post:

Application of the death penalty varies widely by jurisdiction. As The Post's Lisa Rein reported, prosecutors in Baltimore County are about 13 times more likely to seek the death penalty than are those in the city of Baltimore and five times more likely than those in Montgomery County.

Pillage Idiot attacked the allegations of bias in Maryland's application of the death penalty three years ago in a post that is still worth reading. (Using statistics like the commission and the Post uses them, given that Steven Okun was Jewish, one could say that the death penalty has been disproportionately applied to Jews.)

The Post, incidentally, had an excellent article on the death penalty and its application in Maryland. Alas though the URL still exists, the text has disappeared. Anyway, I excerpted a bit of the text in an earlier post.

One of the most common criticisms of capital punishment in Maryland is that the system disproportionately selects black killers of white victims for the ultimate punishment. All but one of the 13 men on death row was sent there for killing white victims, though 80 percent of the state's homicide victims are black. And nine of the 13 condemned men are black, the highest proportion on any death row in the nation.

Of the Baltimore County killers, six are black, three are white and all nine had white victims.

Assistant Baltimore County State's Attorney Ann Brobst called the racial statistics "sort of meaningless."

The vast majority of murders -- and black victims -- are found in Baltimore City and Prince George's County, where prosecutors "don't seek the death penalty," Brobst said. The most aggressive death-penalty jurisdiction, meanwhile, is largely white and has mostly white victims, she said.

Brobst said her office seeks the death penalty in every case where there's "competent, credible evidence" to produce a guilty verdict for first-degree murder and to prove certain aggravating circumstances.

"Sandy O'Connor is committed to using all the tools the legislature gives her, and that includes, at times, seeking the maximum penalty for crimes the law designates as death-penalty cases," Brobst said. "Beyond that, we don't look to the race of anybody."

Brobst noted that there have been about 850 murders in Baltimore County since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978. Of those, about 100 fit the legal definition of a capital crime.

"We have had 11 men on death row," Brobst said, including two who have been executed. "I don't think we can be accused of overreaching."

Even granting miscarriages of justice like the Kurt Bloodsworth case who was eventually acquitted after a ten year ordeal, I believe that the sentence of death is usually carried out with great care.

I'd rather see the the state government confront the unacceptably high murder rate in Baltimore City then trying to address some ill defined injustice in order to assuage its liberal conscience. Even with the recent decline in the murder rate under Mayor Sheila Dixon, Baltimore's murder rate is still way too high. I realize that to some making sure that the state doesn't kill abhorrent criminals legally is a priority, but when too many non-criminals are being killed, such conscience clearing is misplaced.