Md. Governor Calls Halt to Executions

Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening on Thursday declared a moratorium on executions in the state, pending completion and review of a study on whether there has been racial bias in how the death penalty has been applied there.

Glendening, a Democrat, said he expects the moratorium to last for about a year.

Maryland is now the second of the 38 states with capital punishment laws to impose a moratorium, following the lead of Illinois Gov. George Ryan, who halted executions in 2000, after 13 death row inmates had been exonerated there, including one who had ordered his last meal.

Legislation to impose a death penalty moratorium is now pending in nine other states. In addition, 72 cities, from San Francisco to Nashville, have passed resolutions supporting execution moratoriums.

Glendening ordered the moratorium as he granted a stay of execution to a man who was scheduled to be killed by injection next week for murdering a woman at a Catonsville shopping mall in 1991.

The governor said he was granting Wesley E. Baker a stay because the state-funded study by the University of Maryland is expected to be completed in September and there’s a “critical need to be absolutely sure the process is fair and just.”

Glendening added that he would “stay all other cases that come before me until the completion of the study--an examination of 6,000 criminal cases where prosecutors could have sought the death penalty--and its reviews by the Legislature.”

Glendening reiterated his general support for the death penalty, saying that “there are certain crimes so brutal and so vile that they call for society to impose the ultimate punishment.”

However, the governor emphasized, “reasonable questions have been raised in Maryland and across the country about the application of the death penalty.”

More than 90% of the men on Maryland’s death row had white victims, “despite the fact that 80% of Maryland homicide victims are African American,” said Glendening, who is barred from seeking reelection because of term limits. Nine of the 13 men on death row are African American and the other four are white. Blacks make up 28% of Maryland’s population.

Moreover, Glendening noted that nine of the 13 come from just one county, Baltimore, while only 5% of Maryland homicides occur in that county, according to state crime figures. (Baltimore County does not include Maryland’s largest city, Baltimore.)

That geographic disparity is a key reason why Maryland should be examining whether it is applying the death penalty evenhandedly, said Jane Henderson of the Quixote Center, a Maryland organization that has advocated a moratorium in Maryland and other states.

While Maryland has had just four executions since reinstating the death penalty in 1978, Baltimore County had the second-highest death sentencing rate of any county in the U.S. with 600 or more homicides, according to a Columbia University study.

In recent weeks, as Baker’s execution was drawing near, advocacy groups--including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, the Maryland Catholic Conference and Amnesty International--have held demonstrations and placed newspaper ads in a campaign to persuade Glendening to declare a moratorium and stay Baker’s execution.

Just last week, Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a Democrat who is seeking to succeed Glendening, said she favors a moratorium. On the other hand, Robert L. Ehrlich, a Republican congressman who is expected to be his party’s gubernatorial nominee in the November election, said he opposes a moratorium.

Among those praising the governor’s decision Thursday was Kirk Bloodsworth, who was released in 1993 after spending nearly nine years in Maryland prisons, including 21/2 years on death row for a rape and murder, before being cleared by DNA testing.

“I just feel that as long as an innocent person could possibly be put to death, we should not have the death penalty, period,” Bloodsworth said.

But some conservative organizations, including the Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, blasted the move, saying it could lead to “the needless deaths of innocent people.”

During his two terms as governor, Glendening has permitted two executions and granted clemency once.

He said he did not have “absolute certainty” of Eugene Colvin-El’s guilt when he commuted the convicted murderer’s death sentence to life without parole in June 2000. “It is not appropriate to proceed with an execution when there is any level of uncertainty, as the death penalty is final and irreversible.”

On Thursday, Glendening emphasized that Baker’s stay was not based on the specifics of the case.

“This was a difficult decision. My heart goes out to the families of the victims of these horrible crimes.

“I must, however, honor the responsibility I have to be absolutely certain of both the guilt of the criminal and the fairness and impartiality of the process,” he said.

Ann Brobst, assistant state’s attorney in Baltimore County, said there was no doubt that Baker murdered Jane Tyson a decade ago, as her two grandchildren, a 6-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl, watched.

Baker is black and Tyson was white. But “this case has nothing to do with race,” Brobst said. “Mrs. Tyson was targeted [for robbery] because she was vulnerable.... Baker was caught within minutes with her blood on his pants, and his fingerprints were on the driver’s side window of her car.”

Baker’s attorneys acknowledge that Baker participated in robbing Tyson. However, they contend that there is a doubt about whether Baker or his co-defendant fired the shot that killed Tyson.

Baker’s co-defendant was tried separately, and prosecutors, believing that he was not the principal perpetrator, obtained a sentence of life without parole in that case.