Death Penalty Debate: Kirk Bloodsworth versus Scott Shellenberger

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."

http://reisterstown.patch.com/articles/should-maryland-abolish-the-death-penalty#video-9266012

Response to ‘Our death penalty stance is hypocritical.’

In response to Tim Costello’s article in The Daily Telegraph: Our death penalty stance is hypocritical on October 11, 2007 12:00AM, I will highlight four  points on why I disagree with him. I do have respect for Tim Costello as I am a Christian like him but I cannot support him in his opinion for world abolition of the death penalty (I was a former opponent myself).

1. I oppose the death penalty. And I believe that such opposition must be consistent and not selective. For our government to plead for the life of Scott Rush and Van Nguyen but then argue the Bali bombers should die is inconsistent.

Comment: I respect your decision to oppose the death penalty but for the case of the worst of the worst criminals, some death penalty opponents even remain silent. In this case, the Bail Bombers are terrorists who had been proven to be a threat to society and they need to be removed permanently, at the same time, the Bali Bombers are Indonesian citizens and they had been dealt with by the law of that country and we must respect that.

2. Personally, I prefer a global ethic that says the death penalty anywhere is barbaric.

Comment: British journalist, Leo McKinstry once wrote in The Daily Mail: “There is nothing barbaric about the death penalty. The real barbarism lies in refusing to punish criminals.” 

3. It is not a deterrent and the state as executioner suffers disorientation and disrespect.

Comment: The death penalty does deter certain crimes but it depends on how it is used. If the death penalty does not deter any crime, prisons and fines do not either. I do not think that those executioners who were in the firing squad that sent the Bali Bombers to their death felt that they were disrespected and suffered disorientation, but they are protecting their country. If nobody wants to do the hangman’s job, hire a Saudi Arabian executioner who takes pride in doing it.

4. For Scott Rush and the rest of the Bali Nine, their best chance is universal, not selective, opposition to execution.

Comment: I do not think the public will agree to universal opposition to execution as many people feel that the worst of the worst criminals must be put to death.

PRO DEATH PENALTY QUOTE OF THE WEEK [SUNDAY 24 JUNE 2012 TO SATURDAY 30 JUNE 2012]

QUOTE: Cass R. Sunstein & Adrian Vermeule Is Capital Punishment Morally Required? The Relevance of Life-Life Trade-offs 58 Stan. L. Rev. 703 (Jan. 2006) – Many people believe that the death penalty should be abolished even if, as recent evidence seems to suggest, it has a significant deterrent effect. But if such an effect can be established, capital punishment requires a life-life trade-off, and a serious commitment to the sanctity of human life may well compel, rather than forbid, that form of punishment. The familiar problems with capital punishment— potential error, irreversibility, arbitrariness, and racial skew—do not require abolition because the realm of homicide suffers from those same problems in even more acute form. Moral objections to the death penalty frequently depend on a sharp distinction between acts and omissions, but that distinction is misleading in this context because government is a special kind of moral agent. The widespread failure to appreciate the life-life trade-offs potentially involved in capital punishment may depend in part on cognitive processes that fail to treat “statistical lives” with the seriousness that they deserve. The objection to the act/omission distinction, as applied to government, has implications for many questions in civil and criminal law.

AUTHOR 1: Cass R. Sunstein (born September 21, 1954) is an American legal scholar, particularly in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and law and behavioral economics, who currently is the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration. For 27 years, Sunstein taught at the University of Chicago Law School, where he continues to teach as the Harry Kalven Visiting Professor. Sunstein is currently Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he is on leave while working in the Obama administration.

AUTHOR 2: Adrian Vermeule, who is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, has been Professor of Law at Harvard Law School since 2006 and was named John H. Watson Professor of Law in 2008. He was a Visiting Professor of Law in 2005. His writings focus on institutional theory, and he teaches Administrative Law, Legislation, Constitutional Law, and National Security Law. Vermeule was on the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School from 1998 to 2005. There, he was twice awarded the Graduating Students’ Award for Teaching Excellence, in 2002 and 2004. Before entering teaching, he served as a clerk to Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia and Judge David Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

OREGON’S DEATH PENALTY HALT IMMORAL AND WRONG

             In response to Mark Osler’s CNN article: Oregon's death penalty halt merciful and right November 25, 2011, I would like to point out several points that I disagree with him.

            A second buried truth is revealed within the tortured way in which Kitzhaber announced his decision. During a prior term as governor, in 1997, he had allowed two executions, and it seems clear that he was deeply troubled by his role in those killings. How could he not be? It is a heavy responsibility to participate in a deliberative process that identifies a citizen to be put to death by the state. However, Kitzhaber is just the exposed tip of an iceberg of human emotion. 

Response: I understand it is a heavy responsibility but it is wrong to grieve the murdered victims’ families and their loved ones by allowing the guilty to keep their lives. I do not see any wrong by putting the guilty to death. Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen and Chalerm Ubumrung will never shrink from putting the guilty to death.

Kitzhaber is right to say that the capital process is fatally flawed. It is unfair to some defendants, yes. 

Response: Kitzhaber is wrong! There are many safeguard procedures to ensure that only the guilty land on death row. Please check with the Clatsop County District Attorney Joshua Marquis. 

But a system that tries many, condemns some to die and executes few is also cruel and unusual to those who work within the process. It is primarily inflicting pain on victims' relatives who wait in limbo, on jurors who relive those discussions, on prosecutors whose hearts are hardened while their efforts are frustrated and on the budgets and reputations of the states that choose to go on with it anyway.

Response: Many Prosecutors feel that the death penalty is a useful tool in prosecuting; they even use it to let the defendant plea bargain to a life sentence. Some prosecutors only reserve the death penalty for the worst of the worst criminals. 

            “It is primarily inflicting pain on victims' relatives who wait in limbo.” – It is even more inflicting pain on victims’ relatives if we allow the killers to keep their lives in prison, the way to do it is to speed up executions and not to let them appeal too many times. Please see Quote 3 & 4 of Alex Kozinski’s quote.

Kitzhaber is not wrong to declare a moratorium, but he would be better advised to fully commute the sentences of those on death row and urge his fellow citizens to be done with the whole mess that this process has become.

Response: Kitzhaber is WRONG to declare a moratorium, look at what has happen to Illinois this year. I would advise him not to commute the sentences of those on death row as more innocent people will die when you allow dangerous and violent criminals to keep their lives. We will have more mess! As Edmund Burke once said, “All that is necessary for the triumphant of evil is that good men do nothing.”

That kind of bold action is not cowardice. It is leadership.

Response: It is COWARDICE and NOT leadership at all. Kitzhaber defying the will of Oregon voters, who reinstated the death penalty in 1984. 

"First of all, it says we don't respect Oregon voters. We don't respect their views when they say they want something," said Steve Doell, president of Crime Victims United. "If we don't like it, we're not going to do it." [Saturday 26 November 2011]

Kitzhaber supports abortion which does nothing but kills the innocent unborn, why is he against killing the guilty murderers? It is because of his actions, more innocent people will get murdered, Kitzhaber has failed in his duty as a leader! He needs to stop getting manipulated by those abolitionists. Once you step down as Governor, Oregon will be a better place without you.

PRO LIFE QUOTE OF THE WEEK [SUNDAY 24 JUNE 2012 TO SATURDAY 30 JUNE 2012]

QUOTE: You shall not kill either the fetus by abortion or the new born. [Circa 125]

AUTHOR: Barnabas (Ancient Greek: Βαρναβᾶς), born Joseph, was an early Christian, one of the earliest Christian disciples in Jerusalem. According to Acts 4:36 Barnabas was a Cypriot Jew. Named an apostle in Acts 14:14, he and Paul the Apostle undertook missionary journeys together and defended Gentile converts against the Judaizers. They traveled together making more converts (c 45-47), and participated in the Council of Jerusalem (c 50). Barnabas and Paul successfully evangelized among the "God-fearing" gentiles who attended synagogues in various Hellenized cities of Anatolia. Barnabas' story appears in the Acts of the Apostles, and Paul mentions him in some of his epistles. Tertullian named him as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, but this and other attributions are conjecture. Clement of Alexandria ascribed the Epistle of Barnabas to him, but that is highly improbable. Although the date, place, and circumstances of his death are historically unverifiable, Christian tradition holds that Barnabas was martyred at Salamis, Cyprus, in 61 AD. He is traditionally identified as the founder of the Cypriot Orthodox Church. The feast day of Barnabas is celebrated on June 11. Barnabas is usually identified as the cousin of Mark the Evangelist on the basis of Colossians 4. Some traditions hold that Aristobulus of Britannia, one of the Seventy Disciples, was the brother of Barnabas.