Maryland Attorney General J

Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran urged state leaders to abolish the death penalty today, saying "mistakes are inevitable" in the capital murder system and that the prospect of executing an innocent person is an "intolerable risk."
Curran (D), a Catholic who has long disapproved of the capital punishment, said he was moved to call for its abolition when he realized that as many as seven men are poised to die by lethal injection over the next few months - more than twice the number Maryland has executed in the past 40 years.
"In the fractured history of the death penalty in Maryland, this is indeed a watershed moment," said Curran, whose office is responsible for prosecuting capital cases before the US Supreme Court and the highest courts in Maryland.
"Despite our best efforts, this system does make mistakes," Curran said. "We catch most of them. But we cannot catch all of them."
Curran said he has no reason to believe that any of the 12 men currently on death row are innocent. And he said he would do nothing to block upcoming executions, the first of which has been scheduled for mid-March. So long as the death penalty is on the books, Curran said, he has instructed his attorneys to follow the law.
But his action will intensify the debate over the death penalty in Maryland, where Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) has rescinded a moratorium on executions despite a recent University of Maryland study that found compelling statistical evidence of racial bias.
It will also add fuel to a national campaign to reconsider the wisdom of the death penalty. That campaign found a hero in former Illinois Gov. George Ryan's decision to clear out death row before he left office this month, but has rarely had an attorney general as a standard bearer.
"It is unusual for state's highest law enforcement officer to call for the abolition of the death penalty. But I think we're in new times here," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington. "There's been so much exposed about the flaws in the system that more officials are speaking out and taking bolder action that we've ever seen before."