By a 82-56 margin, the Maryland House of Delegates voted Friday to ban the death penalty in that state. The bill now goes to Gov. Martin O'Malley's desk.
"To govern is to choose, and at a time where we understand the things that actually work to reduce violent crime, when we understand how lives can be saved, we have a moral responsibility to do more of the things that work to save lives," O'Malley said at a news conference."We also have a moral responsibility to stop doing the things that are wasteful, and that are expensive, and do not work, and do not save lives, and that I would argue run contrary to the deeper principles that unite us as Marylanders, as Americans, and as human beings," O'Malley added....
Maryland will become the sixth state in as many years to replace capital punishment with life in prison without parole. Currently, 33 states, plus the federal government and the U.S. military, have the legal option of imposing the death penalty, while 17 plus District of Columbia do not.
As much as I support the death penalty for particularly heinous murders, what happened in Maryland to me represents a success, a success of federalism. That and abortion should be a lesson to same sex marriage advocates. Instead of nationalizing the contentious issue such as was done with abortion in Roe v. Wade and leave a country bitterly divided on the issue of abortion, let the states decide the same sex marriage issue through the legislative process. We as a country will be much more united in the end and be more accepted with the issue being decided on a state-by-state basis by elected representatives than being a decision handed down by unelected federal judges
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