Today, the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment made it official, formally recommending in its Final Report that Maryland repeal the death penalty.
The report’s final recommendation concludes:
“For all of these reasons—to eliminate racial and jurisdictional bias, to reduce unnecessary costs, to lessen the misery that capital cases force victims of family members to endure, to eliminate the risk that an innocent person can be convicted—the Commission strongly recommends that capital punishment be abolished in Maryland.”
The Maryland General Assembly (which created the Commission) will take up the issue when its 2009 session begins about a month from now, on January 14. The session ends in April, so we should know fairly soon whether Maryland will become the 15th U.S. state to abolish the death penalty.