The Death Penalty Hits a 30 Year Low

And for good reason:

"The fact is they've gotten a lot of the wrong guys," said Deborah Fleischaker, director of the American Bar Association's Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project.

It shouldn't take too much thinking to realize why. Human error casts it's shadow over all of our actions

Since the death penalty was reinstated, 123 people have been freed from death row after significant questions were raised about their convictions - 14 of them through DNA testing, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

There are other reasons that capital punishment is going the way of the dinosaur:

Among the many causes given by prosecutors, lawyers and death penalty critics: the passage of more state laws that allow juries to impose life without parole; an overall drop in violent crime; and a reluctance among some authorities to pursue the death penalty because of the high costs of prosecuting a capital case.

So lets see. The death penalty is expensive. The death penalty is frequently misapplied. A better and more severe (in my opinion) punishment is available in life without parole.

There should be no question in the minds of Maryland legislators as they are faced with the prospect of writing new regulations for lethal injections in the state. They should (and most likely will) filibuster and refuse to codify murder, effectively reinstating the moratorium on the death penalty in Maryland.