CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 469

penalty is NOT a deterrent to crime, and factual information from
previous studies is still valid.

The last formal study of capital punishment conducted for the
State was in 1962 by a special committee appointed by the Legislative
Council and headed by Ralph G. Murdy. This committee held ex-
tensive public hearings, compiled a considerable amount of factual
data and recommended, by a vote of 5 to 2, that capital punishment
be abolished in Maryland.

At present, Maryland permits the death penalty for six offenses:
first degree murder, rape, statutory rape, assault with intent to commit
rape, kidnapping, kidnapping of a child under 16. In none of these
is the death penalty mandatory; and in several cases, the sentence
ranges from 18 months or two years to death.

There presently are 21 convicts under sentence of death in this
State. The average length of time that each has been under the death
penalty is four years and eight months. In 1935 there were 199 execu-
tions throughout the United States. Last year there was but one!
Maryland has executed only four persons since 1956; the last was six
years ago, in 1961.

I will recommend to the 1968 session of the Maryland General As-
sembly that the death penalty be abolished, with one exception: the
commission of murder by a person who already is serving life sentence
without possibility of parole. Thus there would still be a deterrent
against the murder of a guard or a fellow inmate, or of anyone else
should such inmate escape.

This proposal envisages that, on conviction for one of the six pres-
ent capital offenses, a jury would be permitted to recommend and
the judge permitted to sentence the offender either:

1. To the jurisdiction of the Department of Correction for life,
which under present parole procedures permits parole after 15 years.

or

2. To the jurisdiction of the Department of Correction for life
without possibility of parole, an option not now open to Maryland
courts.

Under this policy, no one could be put to death for a first offense,
no matter how heinous the crime. But in the more severe cases, the
defendant would be effectively incarcerated for the rest of his natural
life and society would be protected, a safeguard that does not now
exist as to life termers convicted of capital crimes.