| State examines death penalty bias By Melissa Lauber UMConnection Staff  United Methodist leaders are applauding the recent decision of Maryland Governor Parris Glendening to put a moratorium on the death penalty. Bishop Felton Edwin May said Glendening had made the correct decision. In spite of his present position of support for capital punishment, Glendening has rightly decided that the state ought to be consistent and just in its actions, the bishop said. The state should not say (that), on one hand, there are sufficient questions being raised about the practice of capital punishment to warrant a review, and on the other hand, continue to execute persons before the review is completed and studied. The moratorium, announced by the governors office on May 9, is expected to continue until the states General Assembly has time to examine a study concerning possible racial bias in the imposition of the death penalty. The study was requested by Glendening and is being conducted by the University of Maryland.  Carol Colbeth, legislative advocate for the Baltimore-Washington Conference, pointed out that the moratorium delays the execution of Wesley Baker, who was scheduled to die by lethal injection the week of May 13. The bishop, Colbeth and the conferences Board of Christian Presence in Gods World, had actively opposed Bakers execution. In a January letter to the governor, Bishop May called capital punishment an ineffectual and culturally-flawed system of retribution. The issue is that we must develop a criminal justice system that is effective, restorative in nature and does not fall unfairly and unequally upon marginalized people including the poor, the uneducated and ethnic and minority persons, he wrote. The death penalty study will examine this issue of fairness. Capital punishment opponents believe Baker is one example of a system that disproportionately executes blacks who kill whites. Baker was convicted of killing a woman as she tucked her two grandchildren into the car in a parking lot in Catonsville. He is black. She was white. Bakers case follows a disturbing pattern in Maryland, said Cathy Knepper, Marylands death penalty abolition coordinator for Amnesty International. Of the 12 people now on death row, seven are blacks convicted of murdering whites, four are whites convicted of murdering whites, and one is black convicted of murdering blacks, Knepper said. Knepper praised United Methodists for their advocacy efforts on behalf of the moratorium. We could not have achieved this result without them, she said. Glendening will leave office in January. The death penalty is expected to play an important role in the political debate during the campaign for governor. Two of the Democrats expected to be on the ballot, Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Baltimore Mayor Martin OMalley, have expressed public opposition to the death penalty. Republican candidate U.S. Congressman Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a member of Arbutus UMC in Arbutus, has spoken out in favor of capital punishment. The United Methodist Church, in its Social Principles, opposes capital punishment and urges its elimination from all criminal codes. | 
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