Power dynamics in the history of death penalty in the state of Maryland

Résumé du document

In 1809, Maryland passed laws establishing degrees of murder and allowing death penalty only for individuals convicted of first degree murder. In 1908, some laws gave discretion to the judge, which meant that the judge could decide a sentence of life imprisonment. It was the same idea in 1916 when the jury was given the possibility to decide whether it applied death penalty or not. That is why the jury could decide a sentence of guilty «without capital punishment».

State laws also decided the type and the place of the executions. The method for executions was hanging. Hangings were made in public in the county where the offence took place until 1922. In 1922, another state law imposed the execution of the hangings at the Metropolitan Transition Center in Baltimore, also called Maryland Penitentiary, which was one of the securest prison of the USA; meaning that a private space for hangings was imposed. In 1955, the general assembly of Maryland changed the method of execution, replacing the hangings by lethal gas. As a consequence, a gas chamber was installed in the Penitentiary in 1956 and was used for the execution of four persons, from 1957 to 1961. In 1993 occurred a change in the law replacing gas injection by lethal injection. If a person had been sentenced before this change, this person could chose between gas injection and lethal injection. It led to the execution of John F. Thanos in 1994, the first execution since 1961.

Extraits

[...] Instead, the Maryland General Assembly passed a law restricting strongly the death penalty in the state. According to this law, people can be convicted to death sentences only in three cases, first if a biological or DNA evidence shows their guilt, secondly if there is a videotaped confession, and to finish if a videotape links the defendant to a homicide . final abolition in 2013, a process involving both legislative and executive power : In january 2013, the governor announced he would present a bill abolishing death penalty. [...]

[...] This case allowed a reaffirmation of the acceptance of the death penalty in the US. This decision was a sort of model showing how to assure the conformity of a death sentence to the 8th amendment ban on «cruel and unusual punishment». It approved some specific capital punishment schemes. For example, it accepted the bifurcated procedure applied in Georgia, which means that the jury had to first decide whether the accuse is guilty or not, and secondly it had to determine the sentence between death penalty or life imprisonment (the trial and sentencing are decided separately). [...]

[...] The power dynamics preparing the end of death penalty in Maryland during the 2000's : . Baker controversial case, an articulation of the executive and the judiciary : Some controversial cases raised the debate about the abolition of death penalty in Maryland. One famous example is the one of Wesley Baker. In 1991, Wesley Baker fired the gun and killed a woman as she got into her car, with her two children inside. He was convicted by a jury in a Circuit Court on October 1992 and sentenced to death. [...]

[...] North Carolina had passed the same law as Maryland, making the death penalty mandatory in case of first-degree murders. James Woodson, guilty of first-degree murder, was sentenced to death, so he challenged the law and the case went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said that this law of North Carolina was unconstitutional, because it violated the 8th amendment. As a consequence, the state of Maryland had to change its death penalty statutes again. To do so, Maryland was inspired by the 1976 Supreme Court case Gregg v. [...]

[...] Like in many other states, death penalty suffered racial bias. For example, four of the five men in the death row today are African Americans. Death penalty also suffered discrepancies between jurisdictions. For example, people convicted of committed crimes in Baltimore County were more sentenced to death than people who committed their crimes in the neighboring city of Baltimore. Death penalty was also more costly for the state of Maryland than the sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. [...]