Something to Emulate, a Politician Making a Stand Against the Death Penalty

Even before the recently filed bankruptcy, our local newspaper The Philadelphia Inquirer has been steadily shrinking into a news-service reprint bulletin at the expense of original reporting. Luckily,  in addition to the daily comics, once in a while worthwhile pieces do appear. Here is “Editorial:  The Death Penalty—Principles First” (2/24/2009), which succinctly and pointedly argues for the Pennsylvania governor to follow in the footsteps of Maryland’s governor in working towards abolishing the death penalty.

Too few politicians today are willing to act in accordance with their conscience when doing so might risk their careers. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is doing that, though, with his push to abolish the death penalty in his state. O’Malley faces a tough fight, but his cause is just. The majority of Maryland residents support capital punishment. The General Assembly in Annapolis remains divided over the issue. By forcing lawmakers to take a stand on the death penalty, O’Malley risks rankling lawmakers he may need for other legislative battles.

A Catholic long opposed to the death penalty, O’Malley believes it isn’t a fair punishment, nor is it an effective deterrent. More broadly, DNA testing has proved that wrongly convicted people have been sentenced to death. There have been 232 post-conviction DNA exonerations nationally since 1989, including 17 involving inmates who served time on death row. The risk of putting an innocent person to death is too heavy a burden to take, O’Malley says. In addition, he argues, the death penalty is more expensive than keeping an inmate in prison for life. O’Malley cites research that shows Maryland has spent $22.4 million more to house inmates on death row than it would have if they had been sentenced to life in prison.

Maryland has executed five people since it reinstated the death penalty in 1978. Five inmates are now on the state’s death row. But the state has had a de facto moratorium on executions, since its highest court ruled in 2006 that Maryland’s procedure for lethal injection had not been properly adopted.

In 2007, New Jersey became the first state to abolish the death penalty legislatively since 1965. A report by the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission concluded that the penalty did not meet evolving standards of decency and that the state could give no guarantee that an innocent person would not be executed. Gov. Corzine signed the measure “with pride.”

Worldwide, 137 countries have abolished the death penalty, including Argentina, Chile, and Uzbekistan in 2008, according to Amnesty International. Meanwhile, the list of countries that still execute citizens reads mainly like a list of rogue states, including Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan. The United States has executed more than 1,000 people since the Supreme Court reauthorized the death penalty in 1976.

With New Jersey taking the lead to abolish the death penalty, and O’Malley taking up the cause in Maryland, perhaps Gov. Rendell will be inspired to put Pennsylvania in the good company of his more progressive neighbors.