ANNAPOLIS — Gov. Martin O’Malley’s administration announced Thursday that it was withdrawing proposed lethal injection rules from consideration by a legislative panel, a move that effectively extends a de facto moratorium on capital punishment in Maryland.
The announcement was made on the same day that lawmakers who oppose the death penalty vowed to push again for repeal.
In a letter to the legislative panel’s two leaders, a top state official wrote that he needs to review the regulations, or protocols, because a lethal injection drug is no longer available for purchase in the United States.
“I will resubmit the regulations to you after the conclusion of this review,” Gary Maynard, secretary of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, wrote in a letter dated Wednesday. Maynard, who said he received advice from the attorney general’s office, did not specify how long the review would take.
The state’s highest court ruled in December 2006 that executions can’t proceed in Maryland until the lethal injection rules are adopted by state lawmakers. O’Malley favors repealing the death penalty in the state.
Rick Binetti, a public safety department spokesman, said he could not provide a timeline for when the administration would send revised regulations back to the General Assembly’s Joint Committee on Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review.
The sole U.S. manufacturer of the drug sodium thiopental announced last month it is ending production because of death-penalty opposition overseas. It is part of a three-drug cocktail used in lethal injections in Maryland and most other states with the death penalty.
The decision to withdraw the regulations from legislative review frustrated death penalty supporters, who say Maryland already has had ample time to approve new lethal injection rules since the high court ruling.
Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger, a death penalty supporter, said the announcement underscores why the state should have moved forward with approving the regulations earlier. He said he didn’t see why the drug’s unavailability should cause long delays.
“There are chemicals that can take the place of the one that is no longer being manufactured in the country,” Shellenberger said. “There have been some states who believe that some of the other chemicals are better than the one that we had listed in our protocols.”
Most of the 35 states with capital punishment have run out of the drug or will soon. Maryland does not have any supply on hand.
Meanwhile, death penalty opponents announced a new strategy for repeal.
Sen. Lisa Gladden, D-Baltimore, said the battle for repeal will shift from the Senate to the House of Delegates, where repeal has stronger support.
O’Malley pushed hard for repeal in his first term. He postponed submitting regulations until the debate was settled, but legislation stalled in the Senate. Instead, lawmakers restricted the death penalty’s use to murder cases with biological evidence such as DNA, videotaped evidence of a murder or a videotaped confession.
The O’Malley administration proposed new regulations in June 2009, but lawmakers on the legislative panel did not approve them after outlining a series of concerns about medical training requirements and the three-drug cocktail used in lethal injections. O’Malley submitted rules to the committee again in November.
The committee charged with approving the rules had been scheduled to consider them next week at a hearing.
Maryland has five men on death row, and five inmates have been executed since Maryland reinstated the death penalty in 1978. Wesley Baker was the last person to be executed in Maryland, in December 2005.
Source: The Daily Record, Feb. 10, 2011
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