death penalty – Sandy Rosenberg

Remembering Judge Dana Levitz

January 22, 2018 | by delsandy | Sandy's 2018 Legislative Diary | No Comments

I knew Judge Dana Levitz.

He testified in Annapolis.

He taught a class at the University of Baltimore Law School right after mine. We said hello to each other every week.

I learned from his obituary that Levitz had prosecuted Anthony Grandison for a brutal double murder in 1983.

Grandison was one of the five inmates on death row when Maryland repealed the death penalty in 2013.

“If there is anything cruel and unusual about the death penalty, it is the never-ending litigation with its constant ups and downs” that makes life emotionally difficult for victims, defendants, and their families, Levitz wrote in 1989.

Unless the appeal process is shortened, he stated, “I don’t believe it is in the public’s interest to continue to pretend that Maryland has a death penalty.”

That’s one of the several reasons we gave for ending capital punishment, offered most profoundly by the parents of a daughter who was murdered.

Advisers but no consultant

May 9, 2014May 9, 2014 | by delsandy | Sandy's 2014 Legislative Diary | No Comments

I have political advisers, but I don’t have a media consultant.

He who represents himself has a fool for a client. I learned that in law school.

Even if you have a good political (or legislative) gut, you should bounce your ideas off of someone whose judgment you trust.

But after we decided to do a mailer emphasizing my civil rights record, I had to draft the text.

Fair Elections. Workplace Discrimination. Religious Freedom. Death Penalty. Holocaust Responsibility.

Sandy Rosenberg was the lead sponsor of major laws that protect our civil rights.

The Voters Rights Protection Act makes it a crime to influence or attempt to influence a voter’s decision whether to go to the polls to cast a vote through the use of force, fraud, threat, menace, intimidation, bribery, reward, or offer of reward. The Election Day robo calls violated this law. HB5/SB287, 2005

The Lilly Ledbetter Civil Rights Restoration Act of 2009 gives workers the opportunity to file a claim for unequal pay, reversing a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court. HB 288, 2009

A business owned by an Orthodox Jewish family was provided an exception to the Sunday blue laws because they could not work on Saturday, their Sabbath. HB 624, 2011

Capital punishment is costly, is not administered fairly, burdens victims’ families, and does not deter murderers. We are a better state for ending the death penalty. SB 276, 2013

The French national railroad company made public its records transporting Jews and others to Nazi concentration camps. HB 520, 2011

I also drafted statements for other elected officials to make on my behalf. How do I compose something that sounds like them?

Google “the office holder and the issue.”

Quiet Progress

February 25, 2014 | by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2014 Legislative Diary | No Comments

No one spoke.

That was good.

My first two bills were heard on the House floor today.

Shortly before the session began, the Republican minority leader commended me for the bipartisan support for my bill criminalizing actions by either side during a referendum signature drive.

The second bill would outline how money should be spent for survivors of homicide victims. None of the drama surrounding the death penalty repeal bill itself this time.

Since both bills were unamended, there was no need to explain changes made by the committee.

In the House of Delegates, you don’t draw attention to your bill once it gets to the floor.

You do that after you’ve gotten at least 71 votes – a majority, on the tally board.

Taking a life

February 14, 2013February 14, 2013 | by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

I also tell my students not to read their testimony but to speak from their head and heart instead.

Today, my committee heard the bill to repeal the death penalty.

Below is my written testimony.

I did not read it but did relate most of it.

This is a conscience vote.

When, if ever, should the state take the life of one of its citizens?

Each of us is being asked make a judgment.

This afternoon, and in the weeks to come, we will consider morality, theology, deterrence, race, DNA, victims, and general funds.

For myself, this is also a pragmatic vote.

We spend an inordinate amount of time and effort legislating and litigating the death penalty. The public would be better served if we expended the same effort on issues that have a greater impact on public safety – where people live, work, and play.

With capital punishment expunged from our Code, we can turn our attention to more pressing criminal justice issues.

Life without the possibility of parole is the appropriate sanction for those who commit heinous murders.

The time has come to end state-sanctioned executions in Maryland.

I urge a favorable report.

Before I spoke, Governor O’Malley testified as to the countries where the majority of executions take place today – Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, the People’s Republic of China, Yemen, and the United States.

I turned to Ben Jealous, President of the NAACP, “Apartheid South Africa used to be on the list.”

When I testified, I related that story.

A different set of numbers on the death penalty

December 14, 2012 | by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2012 Legislative Diary | No Comments

“The death penalty seems to be for Negroes alone,” Thurgood Marshall wrote to Roy Wilkins in the national office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in a letter dated June 7, 1935. As a young attorney in Baltimore, Marshall was defense counsel in several capital cases.

There were 16 executions in Maryland between 1930 and 1939 – 12 for murder and 4 for rape. All but two of the men executed were black.

Yesterday, Ben Jealous, the President and CEO of the NAACP, discussed repeal of the death penalty with Governor Martin O’Malley.

From press reports, their conversation centered on a different set of numbers – 24 in the Senate and 71 in the House. Those are the minimum number of votes needed to pass a bill.

Our head count gives us the necessary votes to repeal the death penalty. Now it’s time to verify.

The Marshall letter and 1930’s statistics are in Professor Larry Gibson’s Young Thurgood, a fascinating account of the future Justice’s early life and legal career in Baltimore. I’m only a few chapters away from Marshall’s lawsuit that integrated the University of Maryland School of Law. Some thirty years ago, I met the plaintiff in that case, Donald Gaines Murray.

January 10 – None of us is safe

January 10, 2012January 11, 2012 | by delsandy | Uncategorized | No Comments

“None of us is safe as long as there is a death penalty,” declared Ben Jealous, President of the NAACP, at our death penalty repeal press conference.

(Kirk Bloodsworth had made that very clear to me at breakfast. An honorably discharged Marine with no criminal record, Kirk was sitting on Maryland’s death row for a murder he did not commit until DNA evidence freed him. )

“We have a very simple request,” I said to the reporters and advocates. “Give us a vote on repeal in both houses of the legislature. A majority of senators and delegates want to end the death penalty.”

I ran into an NAACP official later in the day. Ben Jealous will be returning to Annapolis to lobby for repeal.

That’s more important than an eloquent statement at a press conference.

Read the Baltimore Sun’s account of the press conference.

Ending Executions

March 15, 2011 | by delsandy | Sandy's 2011 Legislative Diary | No Comments

I was asked only one question.

I had started my testimony on repeal of the death penalty by saying, “I’ve told this committee in prior years that the death penalty is inherently flawed. You can’t always get it right. There’s always the risk that innocent people will be executed.

“Last week Governor Quinn of Illinois said that as well, when he signed the law repealing capital punishment in that state.”

My tone was deliberate but emotional.

After I finished, the chairman asked if there were any questions.

“Why should we get rid of something when we never use it?” asked a delegate.

“More than one warrant for execution will be on the Governor’s desk before his term ends,” I replied. “The decision to end capital punishment in Maryland should not be made by one person but by the people’s representatives in the legislature.”

March 15

Just an innocent man

February 10, 2011 | by delsandy | Sandy's 2011 Legislative Diary | No Comments

There are lots of reasons to oppose the death penalty.

“Legislators, advocates, and lawyers spend an extraordinary amount of time and money on these cases. Those resources would be far better spent on initiatives that would protect our citizens in their daily lives,” I began my remarks at a press conference announcing that a record number of members in both houses are co-sponsoring the repeal bill this year.

Then I spoke of the Thurgood Marshall statue adjacent to the State House, which honors his work desegregating the University of Maryland Law School and ultimately, Brown vs. the Board, the case that put an end to the legal fiction of separate but equal.

“But Marshall also represented defendants in death penalty cases and knew well the racial biases permeating the death penalty. That is still the case today,” I concluded.

Afterwards, I Googled to make sure my memory had served me correctly. I found this in a law review article.

Marshall was trial counsel for an African American man accused of raping a white woman. The prosecution offered a life sentence in exchange for a guilty plea. Marshall conveyed the offer to his client who exclaimed: “Plead guilty to what? Raping that woman? You gotta be kidding. I won’t do it.” Marshall later recounted: “That’s when I knew I had an innocent man.”

Marshall told that story to his fellow justices, concluding: “The guy was found guilty and sentenced to death. But he never raped that woman.” He paused, flicking his hand, and added: “Oh well, he was just a Negro.” In a tribute to Justice Marshall after his retirement, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor reflected that stories like these “would, by and by, perhaps change the way I see the world.”

February 10

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Tag: death penalty