Maryland should abolish the death penalty

I quote from The Economist:

The number of countries that carry out judicial killings fell from 41 in 1995 to 23 in 2010, according to Amnesty International, a pressure group. China (chiefly), Iran, North Korea, and Yemen accounted for most of the executions. Votes against the death penalty at the UN General Assembly have passed with big and growing majorities since 2007. Capital punishment has virtually gone in Europe (only Belarus still uses it, most recently in July). This year China whittled down its list of crimes punishable by death....... 

A leading Republican candidate for the presidency, Rick Perry, is governor of Texas, the state that uses it most. The state has carried out a record 236 executions in his nearly 11 years as governor. Mr Perry says he loses no sleep over it.

Great, we have a potential president who does not lose sleep over presiding over a government classed with China, North Korea, Iran and Yemen for brutality to its own citizens!

I regret to say that Maryland, where I live, still has laws imposing the death penalty. The evidence is clear that these laws do not deter capital crimes, that they result in death sentences for innocent people, that they are unevenly and thus unjustly applied, and that they are more expensive to implement than more humane laws of life imprisonment. It is time for Maryland to abolish the death penalty.