Politics & Government

6th District Delegates Vote 'Nay' on Death Penalty Repeal

The Maryland House of Delegates voted last week to abolish the state's death penalty.

While Maryland's House of Delegates voted last week, by a comfortable margin of 82 to 56, to repeal the state's death penalty, all three Sixth District representatives voted against the repeal.

Delegates Joseph "Sonny" Minnick, John Olszewski Jr. and Mike Weir Jr. all cast "no" votes for the bill that will eliminate capital punishment in Maryland.

Reached over the weekend, Olszewski said he had several reasons for voting against the repeal, and added that he had supported changes to the state's law in 2009 that made it much more unlikely that an innocent person would be sentenced to death.

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The 2009 legislation mandated that eyewitness testimony could not be used to give someone a death sentence, and that DNA evidence, a video-taped confession or video-tape of the crime itself must exist for a prosecutor to seek the death penalty, Olszewski said in an email to Dundalk Patch.

Olszewski said he is confident those measures would ensure that an innocent person could never be put to death for a crime he or she did not commit.

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Opponents of capital punishment point to the conviction of Kirk Bloodsworth, who was sentenced to death.

Once more technologically advanced DNA testing became available and more widely used, a testing of DNA evidence in Bloodsworth's case proved he didn't not commit the crime he was convicted of and he was exonerated.

"I voted for that (2009) bill because my faith is such that I could not be at peace if I knowingly condoned innocent people to be put to death by their own government," Olszewski said.

He did not support this year's full repeal for several reasons.

First, he said, "some crimes are simply so disgusting and heinous that they may warrant the use of the penalty."

He is concerned that the loss of capital punishment makes "life without the possibility of parole" the most serious punishment that can be given for any crime.

"This means that, for prisoners already serving a life sentence, there is nothing else that can happen to them behind bars—even if they murder other prisoners and/or prison guards," he said.

The delegate cited several other reasons why he personally was against full repeal of the death penalty, but said there was one main, important reason why he cast a "no" vote.

"Finally, and most importantly, my constituents overwhelmingly opposed the repeal of the death penalty," he said.


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