Maryland Is 18th State To Abolish Death Penalty!

IT'S OFFICIAL!! Maryland House of Delegates has just voted to END the death penalty! The legislation was... fb.me/H2kn2Bq4
— DPFocus (@DPFocus) March 15, 2013

Great news! The Maryland legislature has just completed passage of a bill that will end the death penalty in the state.

By a vote of 82 to 56, the House agreed to replace capital punishment with a sentence of life without parole. It approved the measure a week after the Senate passed the bill.

Governor Martin O'Malley, who has pledged to sign the bill into law, will decide the fate of the five men currently on Maryland's death row.

The bill was O'Malley's second attempt to overturn capital punishment since 2009. When he introduced the legislation in January, he said the death penalty was expensive and did not work.

"Year after year, states which have a death penalty have actually had a higher murder rate than states which do not have a death penalty," he said.

Maryland will become the 18th state in the United States to abolish the death penalty.