VIDEO: Should Maryland Abolish the Death Penalty?
Baltimore
County State's Attorney Scott Shellenberger and anti-death penalty advocate
Kirk Bloodsworth share their opinions about efforts in Annapolis to repeal the
state's capital punishment law.
- By Nick DiMarco and Ron Snyder
- Email the authors
- 5:00 am
Proposed legislation
to repeal Maryland's death penalty is scheduled to be heard by state lawmakers
in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Wednesday afternoon in
Annapolis.
Before the hearing,
supporters of repeal are set to hold an 11:30 a.m. press conference in the
House Office Building with NAACP President
Benjamin Todd Jealous and relatives of murder victims. The two bills pending in
the Senate
and House have
85 co-sponsors between them.
Repeal advocates are
expected to argue that years of death penalty appeals torment families of
murder victims who otherwise would never hear from a defendant sentenced to
life in prison.
Patch caught up with
Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott
Shellenberger—who supports the death penalty—and Kirk Bloodsworth, the
state's leading anti-death penalty advocate, to help frame the debate. (See
video.)
Both Shellenberger
and Bloodsworth offer passionate reasons for their opinions on the death
penalty.
Shellenberger said
there needs to be an "ultimate punishment" for those who commit
certain heinous acts, including the killing of a police officer or the murder
of a correctional officer by a prisoner.
"What do you
tell the family of a correctional officer when a defendant is already serving
life for murder and then they killed your loved one?" Shellenberger said.
"There has to be an ultimate penalty."
Bloodsworth served
eight years, 10 months and 19 days in prison, including two years on death row,
for the 1984 murder of a 9-year-old girl in Rosedale. DNA evidence exonerated
him of the crime and Bloodsworth was released from prison in 1993.
"Honestly, after
what happened to me, no one can say it can’t happen again..." Bloodsworth
said. "We need to get rid of it."
Currently, Maryland
has five defendants sitting on death row, including three who have avoided
being executed since 1983.
The state has
executed five men since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, the last
being Wesley Baker in 2005 for the 1991 murder of grandmother Jane Tyson. She
was shot and killed during an armed robbery in a Catonsville parking lot in front of her
6-year-old granddaughter and 4-year-old grandson.
Since Baker's
execution, Maryland has established some of the most stringent policies in the
country for prosecutors to seek the death penalty. Shellenberger said since
2009 capital cases in the state are limited to those with "biological or
DNA evidence proving guilt, a videotaped confession or a videotape that can
link the defendant to a homicide."
Those restrictions,
Shellenberger said, practically eliminates the chances of someone being wrongly
convicted of capital murder and offer enough safeguards to ensure those
improperly imprisoned—like Bloodsworth—are freed.
Baltimore County has
only sought the death penalty twice since the new restrictions were put in
place, Shellenberger said. Both cases involved defendants in the 2010 murder of
Hess gas station owner William "Ray" Porter.
Walter Bishop was
sentenced in November to life with the possibility of parole after
shooting Porter twice at the East Joppa Road station in Towson after he told
police he was promised $9,000 from Porter's wife, Karla.
Shellenberger said he
will seek the death penalty against Karla Porter, who is scheduled to go to
trial later this year.
"I believe that
Maryland right now has the most restrictive death penalty statute in the country,"
Shellenberger said. "[The legislature has] added conditions to our death
penalty statute that basically said you can not rely solely on eyewitness
testimony, that if you want to go forward with a death penalty case you would
also need DNA linking the defendant to the crime, or a video taped confession
or an actual video of the murder taking place itself."
Bloodsworth counters
that the justice system is far from perfect. He stated that 140 death row
inmates have been wrongly convicted in the United States and 280 people have
been cleared of crimes through DNA, including 17 on death row.
Bloodsworth also
cited the work of the Maryland
Commission on Capital Punishment which recommended in 2008 that the state
should repeal the death penalty for fear of executing an innocent person along
with concerns over racial and geographic disparities.
Bloodsworth added
that that requiring someone to spend the rest of their life in prison is a far
worse punishment than having that person executed.
"The crime that
I was accused of, and ultimately went to death row for and was later
exonerated, the real perpetrator after the fact was never given the death
penalty," Bloodsworth said. "I think that it's a better
punishment for people because they have to sit in this place for the rest of
their lives knowing what they did."
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