For anti-death penalty supporters, it was a blessed year of progress.
But will this recent shift away from a system that the former governor of Illinois George Ryan said was "haunted by demons of error" be permanent? Is a national moratorium on the death penalty in our future?
Hardly.
With some states attempting to reinstate--and even reinvigorate--the death penalty, and several highly charged trials in the near future, a swing back towards capital punishment seems imminent.
In September, Massachusetts' Governor Mitt Romney created a commission to hammer out a proposal that will reinstate the death penalty in cases in which there is a "virtual certainty" of guilt. Referring to new advances in DNA analysis, Romney said, "Just as science can free innocents, science can identify the guilty." Romney plans to introduce a formal proposal to the state legislature early next year.
Currently, thirty-eight states have death penalty statues on their books. And if the governor of Massachusetts has his way, that number will increase by one.
Similarly, in the state of Maryland, Governor Robert Ehrlich lifted a moratorium on executions that was imposed by the previous governor, Parris Glendening. A bill in the Maryland Senate attempted to re-impose the moratorium, but was defeated in mid-March. And although the Maryland Court of Appeals has suspended executions while it reviews sentencing procedures, having a vocal supporter of the death penalty in Maryland's highest office is not positive news for anti-death penalty advocates.
More important than the states' actions, however, are the new anti-terrorism laws. These new laws could have a broad effect on not only how defendants are charged, but also on how they are sentenced. Specifically, the law states that a defendant is eligible for the death penalty if convicted of murder with the intent to sway government policy or to terrorize the public.
Three upcoming trials will highlight this resurgent zeal for capital punishment in cases of terrorism.
Despite a federal appeals court's ruling that suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui is not eligible for the death penalty, the Justice Department is fervently attempting to tie Moussaoui to the September 11, 2001 al Qaeda attacks. According to court briefs, prosecutors have said Moussaoui participated in the "conspiracy" that killed close to 3,000 Americans. For his involvement, they argue, Moussaoui should be executed.
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