Death Penalty Reform Bill on Governor's desk!

Legislation is now on Governor O’Malley’s desk that gives Maryland the toughest standard of proof of guilt in death cases of any state.

Capital prosecutions in Maryland will be limited to cases with biological evidence or DNA evidence that links the defendant to the act of murder, a video taped, voluntary interrogation and confession of the defendant to the murder, or a video recording that conclusively links the defendant to the murder.

The Governor will sign this bill into law in the coming weeks.

Please THANK your delegates IF they voted for this bill, SB 279, which reduces the risk of Maryland executing innocent people! And tell them you will be expecting for them to vote for full repeal in a future legislative session! IF your delegates voted no, please share your dismay.

The 2009 Legislative Session in Brief

We began this legislative session with high hopes that we would pass an outright repeal of the death penalty. We forged a powerful alliance with our Governor, Martin O’Malley, who has championed repeal of the death penalty like no other governor in decades! As the Governor said during a recent interview on the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, this bill is important progress even if it is not the full repeal we wanted.

Thanks to the action of thousands of Marylanders just like you, we muscled the repeal bill out of the Senate Committee, within which it had been trapped, one vote short, for two previous sessions. We won historic motions to bring the bill to the Senate floor, evoking committee bypass rules last used in 1978 when the death penalty was reinstated. Months of grassroots organizing was topped of by the Governor sending his own appeals to approximately 70,000 Marylanders via his own campaign and party networks and leading a march of clergy in the state capital to urge repeal.

The battle in the Senate put the Governor toe-to-toe with Senate President Mike Miller, co-sponsor of reinstatement back in 1978 and Senate President since 1987. Miller had pledged publicly to not lobby Senate votes on the repeal. Instead, after unsuccessfully twisting arms to defeat the motions to bring the bill to the floor, the Senate President manipulated the floor process so that there was neither debate nor a vote on full repeal. He hurried through an amendment that stripped repeal out of the bill. We came one Senator short of stopping this amendment – Montgomery County Senator Rona Kramer voted for it despite promising constituents a vote for repeal during the 2006 elections. Miller's tactics deliberately sowed confusion on the floor aimed at convincing the body to recommit the bill back to Committee, effectively killing any advances this year. Miller cynically attacked the governor’s leadership: “I don't think any previous governor has politicized the death penalty in such a manner.”

Once SB 279 reached the floor of the House of Delegates, death penalty defenders introduced 13 amendments, ALL attempting to weaken the bill. But a strong, pro-repeal majority of Delegates staunchly resisted EVERY amendment, making sure progress was made this year! Thank your Delegates who voted for the bill!

House of Delegates vote on SB 279 giving MD the highest burden of evidence in death cases of any state

Voting “yea” – Thank them!

Voting “nay” – share your dismay!

Absent

Proctor, James E., Jr. (D), District 27A

Turner, Frank S. (D), District 13