Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley will now have an opportunity to sign the byproduct of his biggest legislative effort this session: repealing the death penalty. Granted, it will not repeal the death penalty, but it will be much harder for the state to kill people now.
The House of Delegates voted 87 to 52 today in favor of the bill, which places much tighter restrictions on death penalty cases, so as to avoid the possibility of the state killing innocent people. Now the state can only kill people in cases where the verdict is unarguable.
The measure will limit capital cases to those with biological or DNA evidence, a videotaped confession or a videotape linking the defendant to a homicide. Those are among the steepest hurdles faced by prosecutors in the 35 states that have a death penalty.
As long as one of those criteria are met, the state can continue to go about killing people when one judge decides that a person's crime was so bad as to merit a state-ordered killing.
Some of the bill's opponents, however, are worried that these mean bureaucratic regulations will make it way too hard for the state to ever kill people again.
"You have cleverly and successfully killed the death penalty in Maryland," said Del. Patrick L. McDonough (R-Baltimore County), who argued that the bill's restrictions are so strict that prosecutors will not be able to bring capital cases.
How are prosecutors supposed to have fun if it's hard to argue that the state should kill people?
Jim Newell does not kill people, but does write for Wonkette and IvyGate.
