Opponents of the death penalty say they have 123 good reasons for ending executions in Maryland, and they all have names ? the 123 Americans exonerated of the crimes for which they were originally sentenced to death.
Six of them came to Annapolis on Wednesday to passionately argue for the repeal, adding their voices to those of Gov. Martin O?Malley and others advocating a ban before Senate and House committees.
“The possibility that we could kill an innocent person ? that trumps it all,” said Kirk Bloodsworth, the most famous of the three who live in Maryland. Bloodsworth, an ex-Marine with no criminal record, spent nearly nine years in prison for raping and killing a 9-year-old Baltimore County girl. In 1993, he became the first person in the United States freed from prison on the basis of DNA testing.
“If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone,” Bloodsworth said. “Everybody said they did the right thing. Everybody was wrong.”
The victims are often cited as a reason for executions, but “you are looking at the victims,” said Shabaka Waqlimi (formerly Joseph Brown), referring to himself and the other five former death row inmates behind him. Now living in Prince George?s County, he once came within 13 hours of being executed in Florida. “Mistakes will be made,” said Waqlimi, set free after another trial.
That sentiment was shared by Shujuaa Graham, a Takoma Park resident sentenced to death for killing a prison guard in California before a fourth trial freed him.
The possibility of killing a person wrongfully convicted was one of several reasons cited by O?Malley for his support of repeal.
“The death penalty is not a deterrent, but an accelerant” for murder, said O?Malley, citing statistics to show that murder rates actually went up in states that had the death penalty.
It also cost too much to use the death penalty, and “the cost of due process will never go down,” O?Malley said. He said the cost of the putting to death the five people executed in the last 20 years was $22.4 million more than it would have cost to keep them in prison for life without parole, the alternative preferred by the legislation.
