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| Exonerated from DR hopes new GOV will act on executions - |
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victims cry
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Thu Nov 16, 2006 7:29 am |
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Exonerated from DR hopes new GOV will act on executions
Fmr. Inmate Hopes New Gov. Will Act On Capital Punishment
POSTED: 6:41 am EST November 15, 2006
UPDATED: 6:48 am EST November 15, 2006
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BALTIMORE -- A man exonerated by DNA evidence of the killing of a 9-year-old girl hopes Democratic Gov.-elect Martin O'Malley will be more open to considering whether to abolish or suspend the death penalty than his Republican predecessor.
Kirk Bloodsworth was twice convicted of the girl's 1984 murder and spent two years on death row following his first trial. The second trial brought another conviction, although he received a life sentence instead of capital punishment. Bloodsworth was cleared in 1993, becoming the first American freed because of DNA evidence after being convicted in a death penalty case.
Bloodsworth was scheduled to speak Tuesday at Goucher College in Towson at an event sponsored by Maryland Citizens Against State Executions.
"I just want to tell people what it was like for me and how easy it can happen," Bloodsworth said Monday in a telephone interview. "If it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody."
Bloodsworth, who lives in Dorchester County, said he hopes the defeat last week of Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich will return scrutiny to the death penalty in Maryland.
"It's just that I think people like myself are often caught up in an emotional, visceral, response to something very tragic when we should really keep our heads at that moment and let justice do its thing," Bloodsworth said. "I could have lost my life."
O'Malley, who is Catholic, has said he personally opposes capital punishment, but spokesmen for his campaign have said he will enforce the laws of the state, including the application of the death penalty. Calls Monday to O'Malley's staff for further comment were not immediately returned.
When O'Malley signed on in 2000 to a newspaper advertisement taken out by former Mayor Kurt Schmoke and the late lawmaker Howard Rawlings asking for a moratorium, he talked about the issue.
"I am not in favor of the death penalty. I don't think as people in a civilized society we can support capital punishment. You don't promote respect for life by making us participate in the death penalty," he said at the time.
Former Democratic Gov. Parris Glendening imposed a moratorium on capital punishment in 2002 as a University of Maryland professor was conducted a study of the state's use of the death penalty.
University of Maryland criminologist Raymond Paternoster's study concluded that the race of the victim and the suspect were factors in whether prosecutors sought death sentences against accused killers. Blacks who killed whites were the most likely to face a death penalty trial. Geography also played a role, he found. Some counties were found to pursue death penalties more aggressively.
Not long after the report was released, Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr., O'Malley's father-in-law, called for Maryland to abolish the death penalty. Curran, who is retiring this winter, is a longtime death penalty opponent but has always seen that the law was carried out. In calling for its repeal, he cited the possibility of the judicial system making a mistake and executing the wrong person.
But as soon as Ehrlich took office four years ago, he lifted Glendening's moratorium. Two death-row inmates, Steven Oken and Wesley Baker, were executed during his administration.
O'Malley's election also will have an impact on Maryland's highest court, which has been divided on how to apply Maryland's death penalty law. O'Malley will get to replace three of the seven judges on the Court of Appeals because they are near the mandatory retirement age of 70.
Maryland has five men on death row. Vernon Evans, who was sentenced to die for the murders of Scott Piechowicz and his sister-in-law, Susan Kennedy, in 1983, was the last inmate to come close to being put to death. In February, the Court of Appeals stayed his execution and heard arguments in four separate cases in May. The court has yet to rule on those cases.
Maryland lawmakers have regularly submitted measures to repeal the death penalty law. Democratic Delegate Maggie McIntosh of Baltimore, who has supported a repeal, said she expected it would be introduced again. "I'm sure I'll be a co-sponsor," she said.
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| tulsad
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| Tardanderten41 wrote: | wow shit  
regards, Tardanderten41 |
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