Researchers advise Maryland (USA) to halt executions until studies end
February 23, 2001 
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Data hint at race bias – ‘Prudent to wait’; Some senators fear moratorium could end death penalty
Originally published February 23, 2001
Preliminary studies of Maryland’s death penalty suggest enough racial bias that the state should wait for further analysis before carrying out more executions, researchers told a Senate committee in Annapolis yesterday.
“If the legislature was to be confident of knowing whether race affects the imposition of death sentences, it would be prudent to wait until you see the results,” said David C. Baldus, a law professor at the University of Iowa College of Law.
Yesterday’s hearing before the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee marked the first public discussion before the General Assembly this year of a proposal to suspend executions in Maryland until July 2003.
The moratorium would last until a study by the University of Maryland, College Park is completed on whether the death penalty is unfairly imposed on African-Americans. Executions could resume after the Assembly had time to consider the study’s results in its 2003 session.
“We must wait to review the study’s findings,” said Sen. Clarence W. Blount, the Senate majority leader and sponsor of the moratorium bill. “If there is a finding of bias, we must find a way to remedy the injustice.”
Nine of the 13 inmates on Maryland’s death row are black, the highest proportion in the nation. Three of those black inmates could face execution this year.
Although blacks account for about 75 percent of murder victims in Maryland, about three-quarters of the victims killed by death row inmates are white.
No one testified in opposition to the moratorium, but several senators expressed their discomfort with the proposal, saying they fear it could be a back-door method of ending the death penalty in Maryland.
“I think we’re kidding ourselves if we think it will only be two years,” said Sen. Philip C. Jimeno, an Anne Arundel County Democrat. “We need to determine whether we’ll have the death penalty in Maryland, yes or no. That’s the question before the committee this year.”
To bolster the case for the moratorium, Baldus and Howard University political science professor Richard Seltzer presented results from their studies on juries and on the race of victims and defendants in Maryland death penalty cases.
For example, in Baltimore County, blacks make up 12 percent of the adult population but only 5 percent of the pool of jurors, Seltzer found.
During jury selection, “the prosecution is about twice as likely to strike an African-American as a white,” he said. “The death penalty needs to be done in a fair and just manner, and more study needs to be done.”
In a review of 346 Maryland cases in which defendants were eligible for the death penalty, Baldus found that killers of white victims were more likely to receive it than killers of nonwhite victims, and black defendants were more likely to receive it than white defendants.
“It doesn’t imply there is any wrongdoing or discrimination, but it implies that there is a risk of improper application of the death penalty,” said Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Project in Washington. “I don’t think Maryland can be too complacent.”
If Maryland passes a moratorium, it will join several other states, including Illinois and Nebraska, that are delaying executions while they study the death penalty.
In Illinois, the moratorium was sparked by concerns that innocent people might be wrongly convicted and sentenced to death. That also has caused concern in Maryland.
Testifying in favor of the moratorium yesterday was Kirk Bloodsworth, who spent seven years on Maryland’s death row before DNA evidence cleared him in 1993.
“When we kill somebody saying they did something they didn’t, that’s a dual tragedy,” Bloodsworth said. He also testified in support of four bills to make DNA testing procedures more available to defendants before trial and after conviction.
Gov. Parris N. Glendening supports the death penalty study and put $225,000 in this year’s budget to pay for it. But he has said he opposes a moratorium because the study will look at the state’s system as a whole, not at individual cases in which inmates have been sentenced to die.
A statewide poll for The Sun released last month found that 44 percent of Marylanders favor a moratorium, while 49 percent do not. But among blacks, 60 percent favor a moratorium, compared with 40 percent of whites.
Several committee members indicated yesterday that they are reluctant to support a moratorium.
“It seems like you already have all of the studies in the world to show it isn’t fair, so why do you need two more years?” asked Sen. Alex X. Mooney, a Frederick County Republican.
Earlier yesterday, House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr. told the Legislative Black Caucus that many delegates are concerned that approving a moratorium would lead to an inevitable result.
The perception, Taylor said, is that “we’re talking about a stepping stone to abolishing the death penalty altogether.” Getting a moratorium bill through the House is “going to be very problematic,” he said.
Taylor said he would prefer to see the Senate complete its debate of the issue before his chamber takes it up. “If the Senate moves first in a positive way, that’s going to help,” he said.
Sun staff writer Michael Dresser contributed to this article.
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