Letdown
As the Senate GOP Caucus notes, we had a chance to shut down debate on the Death Penalty today:
After about an hour of tumoil on the Senate floor, Senator EJ Pipkin (R - Cecil, Kent, Queen Anne's & Caroline) move to recommit the bill back to the Judicial Proceedings Committee. The motion to recommit failed on a tie vote of 23 to 23.So why did it fail by one vote. Simple. Take a look at the vote totals:
Senate of Maryland
2009 Regular Session
SB 279 Special Orders
Sen. Gladden
Criminal Law - Death Penalty - Repeal
Motion to recommit the bill
PRESIDING: MR.PRESIDENT
LEGISLATIVE DATE
MAR 3, 2009
23 YEAS 23 NAYS 0 EXC 1 NOT VOTING 0 EXCUSED (ABSENT)
VOTING YEA - 23
MR.PRESIDENT GLASSMAN KITTLEMAN PIPKIN
BRINKLEY GREENIP KLAUSMEIER ROBEY
COLBURN HAINES MCFADDEN SIMONAIRE
DYSON JACOBS MIDDLETON STOLTZFUS
EDWARDS KASEMEYER MOONEY STONE
GARAGIOLA KELLEY MUNSON
VOTING NAY - 23
ASTLE EXUM KING PINSKY
BROCHIN FOREHAND KRAMER PUGH
CONWAY FROSH LENETT RASKIN
CURRIE GLADDEN MADALENO ROSAPEPE
DEGRANGE HARRINGTON MUSE ZIRKIN
DELLA JONES PETERS
NOT VOTING - 1
HARRIS
EXCUSED FROM VOTING - 0
EXCUSED (ABSENT) - 0
So on the most important social issue facing the General Assembly, Andy Harris of all people decides to take a pass.
I can't wait to hear the reasoning as to why Senator Harris was not present for this important vote. Because at the moment, his failure to be where he needed to be is the difference between ensuring preservation of the death penalty as a form of punishment and its elimination.
(Crossposted)
13 comments:
This is a social issue?
The Death Penalty Provides More Protection for Innocents
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters, contact info below
Often, the death penalty dialogue gravitates to the subject of innocents at risk of execution. Seldom is a more common problem reviewed. That is, how innocents are more at risk without the death penalty.
Enhanced Due Process
No knowledgeable and honest party questions that the death penalty has the most extensive due process protections in US criminal law.
Therefore, actual innocents are more likely to be sentenced to life imprisonment and more likely to die in prison serving under that sentence, that it is that an actual innocent will be executed.
That is. logically, conclusive.
Enhanced Incapacitation
To state the blatantly clear, living murderers, in prison, after release or escape, are much more likely to harm and murder, again, than are executed murderers.
Although an obvious truism, it is surprising how often folks overlook the enhanced incapacitation benefits of the death penalty over incarceration.
Enhanced Deterrence
16 recent studies, inclusive of their defenses, find for death penalty deterrence.
A surprise? No.
Life is preferred over death. Death is feared more than life.
Some believe that all studies with contrary findings negate those 16 studies. They don't. Studies which don't find for deterrence don't say no one is deterred, but that they couldn't measure those deterred.
What prospect of a negative outcome doesn't deter some? There isn't one . . . although committed anti death penalty folk may say the death penalty is the only one.
However, the premier anti death penalty scholar accepts it as a given that the death penalty is a deterrent, but does not believe it to be a greater deterrent than a life sentence. Yet, the evidence is compelling and un refuted that death is feared more than life.
Enhanced Fear
Some death penalty opponents argue against death penalty deterrence, stating that it's a harsher penalty to be locked up without any possibility of getting out.
Reality paints a very different picture.
What percentage of capital murderers seek a plea bargain to a death sentence? Zero or close to it. They prefer long term imprisonment.
What percentage of convicted capital murderers argue for execution in the penalty phase of their capital trial? Zero or close to it. They prefer long term imprisonment.
What percentage of death row inmates waive their appeals and speed up the execution process? Nearly zero. They prefer long term imprisonment.
This is not, even remotely, in dispute.
What of that more rational group, the potential murderers who choose not to murder, is it likely that they, like most of us, fear death more than life?
Life is preferred over death. Death is feared more than life.
Furthermore, history tells us that lifers have many ways to get out: Pardon, commutation, escape, clerical error, change in the law, etc.
In choosing to end the death penalty, or in choosing not implement it, some have chosen to spare murderers at the cost of sacrificing more innocent lives.
Furthermore, possibly we have sentenced 25 actually innocent people to death since 1973, or 0.3% of those so sentenced. Those have all been released upon post conviction review. The anti death penalty claims, that the numbers are significantly higher, are a fraud, easily discoverable by fact checking.
The innocents deception of death penalty opponents has been getting exposure for many years. Even the behemoth of anti death penalty newspapers, The New York Times, has recognized that deception.
To be sure, 30 or 40 categorically innocent people have been released from death row . . . (1) This when death penalty opponents were claiming the release of 119 "innocents" from death row. Death penalty opponents never required actual innocence in order for cases to be added to their "exonerated" or "innocents" list. They simply invented their own definitions for exonerated and innocent and deceptively shoe horned large numbers of inmates into those definitions - something easily discovered with fact checking.
There is no proof of an innocent executed in the US, at least since 1900.
If we accept that the best predictor of future performance is past performance, we can, reasonably, conclude that the DNA cases will be excluded prior to trial, and that for the next 8000 death sentences, that we will experience a 99.8% accuracy rate in actual guilt convictions. This improved accuracy rate does not include the many additional safeguards that have been added to the system, over and above DNA testing.
Of all the government programs in the world, that put innocents at risk, is there one with a safer record and with greater protections than the US death penalty?
Unlikely.
Full report -All Innocence Issues: The Death Penalty, upon request.
Full report - The Death Penalty as a Deterrent, upon request
(1) The Death of Innocents: A Reasonable Doubt,
New York Times Book Review, p 29, 1/23/05, Adam Liptak,
national legal correspondent for The NY Times
copyright 2007-2009, Dudley Sharp
Permission for distribution of this document, in whole or in part, is approved with proper attribution.
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters
e-mail sharpjfa@aol.com 713-622-5491,
Houston, Texas
Mr. Sharp has appeared on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX, NBC, NPR, PBS, VOA and many other TV and radio networks, on such programs as Nightline, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The O'Reilly Factor, etc., has been quoted in newspapers throughout the world and is a published author.
A former opponent of capital punishment, he has written and granted interviews about, testified on and debated the subject of the death penalty, extensively and internationally.
Pro death penalty sites
http://homicidesurvivors.com/categories/Dudley%20Sharp%20-%20Justice%20Matters.aspx
www.dpinfo.comwww.cjlf.org/deathpenalty/DPinformation.htm
www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/links/dplinks.htm
www.coastda.com/archives.html
www.lexingtonprosecutor.com/death_penalty_debate.htm
www.prodeathpenalty.com
http://yesdeathpenalty.googlepages.com/home2 (Sweden) www.wesleylowe.com/cp.html
to most people, yes. YMMV.
Harris never fails to disappoint.
I'm not trying to defend here, I'm just pointing out he was present but chose not to vote. Something quite different then being absent, and some might consider far worse.
MW, speaking as someone who doesn't know Andy Harris at all - I would venture to ask him if he was paying attention at all to what was going on around him.
How silly is that?
Why didn't he vote? He needs to go on the record. Simply sitting it out means his constituents had zero representation.
by not voting, he told you that someone asked him not to vote and he agreed not to.
WHAT? Let down by our politicians? No frickin way!
Actually, the statement that he was present but chose not to vote is inaccurate. He left the Chamber at around 4:00 (which was before this vote) and did not return. Wonder what was so important that he couldn't do the job that his district elected him too do, serve in the Senate.
I heard he was on-call last night... doing his real-world job as a doctor... part of the risks associated with a part-time legislature, I suppose. I'm not excusing his behavior... just throwing out what I heard...
Doctors can switch their on calls with another doctor, if they wish and if they can find someone.
They do it all the time, if important enough.
If Harris can't find the time to be a Doctor and a Senator then he should just step down. This is absolutely ridiculous. We had a chance to knock that smirk off O'Governors face and it slipped through our fingers.
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