Current State Law
Only first degree murder is a capital offense in the state of Maryland. Criminal Law § 2-201 of the Annotated Code of Maryland defines murder in the first degree as:
- A deliberate, premeditated, and willful killing.
- Committed by lying in wait.
- Committed by poison.
- Committed in the perpetration of or an attempt to perpetrate arson, burglary, carjacking, escape from prison, kidnapping, mayhem, rape, robbery, sexual offense, sodomy, or bomb-making.
- If the offender willfully, deliberately, and with premeditation intended the death of a law enforcement officer.
The state's attorney in a case involving a capital punishment eligible crime must give the defendant notice at least thirty days prior to the trial that the death penalty will be sought and the aggravating circumstances that the state will present to the jury.
Under Criminal Law § 2-303, the sentence of death is imposed:
- "…by intravenous administration of a lethal quantity of an ultrashort-acting barbiturate or other similar drug in combination with a chemical paralytic agent."
The lethal injection procedure used in Maryland consists of the anesthetic drug sodium pentothal, followed by the paralytic drug pancuronium bromide, which is also known as Pavulon, and lastly a drug which stops the heart, potassium chloride. The execution is completed when, using an electrocardiogram, a physician declares the convict to be dead.
Unlike most states, Maryland does not offer the condemned a special last meal; instead the prisoner receives whatever food the general prison population is served the day of the convict's death.
As in any other state, people who are under 18 at the time of commission of the capital crime or mentally retarded are constitutionally precluded from being executed.
Read more about this topic: Capital Punishment In Maryland
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