Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley signed legislation today making Maryland the 18th state in the country to join the civilized world and banned the death penalty.
While, on the surface, this may appear to be a national trend — as Think Progress points out, “Maryland is the sixth state to eliminate the penalty in as many years” — it is not exactly the kind of trend we may want to see. Maryland — technically a southern state, but really more of a Northeastern liberal one — is part of a cleaving in which liberal states are ending capital punishment and the South and Southwest are going the other way.
Again, from Think Progress:
Florida just passed a bill (not yet signed into law) to speed up the death penalty, with legislators saying, “this is not about guilt or innocence,” while Mississippi is slated to execute an inmate next week without having tested available DNA from the crime scene.
It is a two-Americas thesis that has nothing to do with economic prospects and one that does not bode well for attempts to unify our politics.
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Hank Kalet 
Innocent people do become ensnared in the judicial process and innocent people do end up on death row. Our judicial system is not perfect, mistakes are made, innocent people are convicted and sent to jail. A prime example of justice gone berserk was the Central Park Five case in which 5 tens were railroaded and imprisoned for a crime that they did not commit. If the victim had died, the media would have been screaming for their heads. The hate wing radio crowd (Bob Grant, etc.) would have been ranting for death and punishment 24/7. Oh wait, they did that anyhow. Bob Grant (amongst many, a veritable horde of right wing radio vomitus coast to coast) is a truly vile and despicable human being who has a lot to atone for – decades of disseminating hate, bigotry, intolerance and venomous rancid ignorance.