Letters to the Editor
The Baltimore Sun
Fax No. 410-332-6977

Re: Death Penalty -- Eugene Colvin-El et al.

Sirs or Madams:

If Governor Glendening were to browse the Maryland Reports and Maryland Appellate Reports (the official "published" opinions of the Court of Appeals and the Court of Special Appeals found in any law library and most law offices) for fact situations pertaining to first and second degree murder convictions, he would find that, of the numerous cases considered since Colvin-El's conviction in 1981, there is little or no correlation much less meaningful comparison among the facts surrounding convictions of life, life without parole and death.

The Governor should know that death penalty cases are virtually always "published" while all the rest of them may or may not be. He can then ask himself which of the "death penalty" candidates mentioned in the law books over 20 years have been executed, which are on Death Row today and which have acquired an alternative sentence or no sentence at all.

According to the Department of Public Safety, there were 2079 persons with life sentences (over 100 of these said to have life without parole) under its jurisdiction as of April of this year. Of a population of 23,183 incarcerated, 4256 inmates had been convicted of at least one murder. (The Department is not able to maintain statistics on multiple life or life plus residents for technical reasons.) In contrast, the population of "Death Row" became 18 only last week and many, many appeals remain.

The Governor should be mindful: The trend in Maryland executions looks less and less like equal justice under the law and more and more like state-sanctioned human sacrifice.