Lt. Gov. Michael S

Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele says he is troubled by new evidence of racial bias in Maryland's capital murder system and will advise Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. to seek a new study of the issue, even as Maryland prepares for its first execution in more than four years.
Steele, the first African American elected statewide in Maryland and a personal opponent of the death penalty, said his concerns arose from a new University of Maryland study that shows black killers of white victims are nearly four times as likely to be sentenced to die than blacks who kill blacks. Ehrlich has named Steele his point person on capital punishment.
"This report demonstrates the necessity for a closer look at how we handle these cases, from the moment an individual is captured to the moment he is sentenced," Steele said in an interview last week. "I haven't discussed it yet with the governor, but maybe we should commission another study that looks at how our prosecutors prosecute capital crimes."
Steele's comments represent the new Republican administration's first substantial response to the study released Jan. 7 by University of Maryland criminologist Raymond Paternoster.
In a brief interview Friday, Ehrlich did not directly address Steele's remarks and played down the study's significance. He said he asked Steele and top aides, including chief lobbyist Kenneth Masters, to read it and report back to him.
Steele said that he finds the study's conclusions "personally troubling" and that Ehrlich has indicated that he, too, is "bothered by it."
Prosecutors say there could be as many as seven executions this year, a record since the death penalty was reinstated in Maryland in 1978.