On February 21, the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee of Maryland approved (6-5) a bill to replace the death penalty with a sentence of life without parole. In prior years, the effort to end capital punishment was often blocked in this committee. Senator Robert Zerkin was one legislator who changed his mind this year, "As heinous and awful as these individuals [on death row] are, I think it's time for our state not to be involved in the apparatus of executions," he said. The bill outlaws future death sentences and recommends that current death sentences be commuted by the governor to life without parole. There appear to be sufficient votes for repeal in the Senate and the House, and Governor Martin O’Malley has pledged to sign the bill. A final vote in the Senate is expected by Feb. 26. The bill garnered support from a coalition of murder victims’ families, communities of color, law enforcement officials, faith leaders, civil rights leaders, and other prominent individuals, including Kirk Bloodsworth--who was freed from the state’s death row--Vicki Schieber--a Maryland resident whose daughter was murdered in Philadelphia in 1998--Catholic Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, and Ben Jealous, President of the NAACP. The governor has pledged to use some of the money saved from not having the death penalty to support victims' services. If Maryland repeals the death penalty, it will become the sixth state to do so in the past six years. Other states considering repeal of the death penalty, include Montana, Colorado, Kentucky, Oregon, and Delaware.
No new death sentneces were imposed in North Carolina in 2012, marking the first time since 1977 that this has occurred. The state had a record-low of four capital trials in 2012. Thomas Maher, executive director of North Carolina’s Indigent Defense Services, said, “In some ways, it’s a milestone. In other ways, it’s part of a trend.” In 2000, juries in the state presided at 57 capital trials, ultimately yielding 18 death sentences. In 2011, there were 12 capital trials resulting in 3 death sentences. North Carolina has not carried out an execution since 2006. This declining use of the death penalty is in line with a broader national trend. In 2011, there were 78 new death sentences in the U.S., a 75% drop from 1996, when 315 individuals were sentenced to death. It was the first time since 1976 that the country produced fewer than 100 death sentences in a single year.
On November 6, 2012, California’s 
A recent study by Sherod Thaxton (pictured) of the University of Chicago Law School examined the effect of the threat of the death penalty on plea bargaining. Using statistical analysis of charging and sentencing data in Georgia between 1993 and 2000, Thaxton found that the possibility of a death sentence increased the likelihood of a plea bargain: "deterring two out of every ten death noticed defendants from pursuing a trial." However, the lower number of trials does not offset the high costs of the death penalty, he found. "The empirical findings in this article suggest that the threat of the death penalty has a substantial causal effect on the likelihood that a defendant accepts a plea agreement. Nevertheless, the magnitude of the effect is clearly insufficient to offset the substantial administrative and financial costs arising from the occasional capital defendant taking her chances at trial." In many cases, the author said, significant pre-trial costs are incurred even before a plea agreement is reached. The study, 
The U.S. Military has not carried out an execution of a service member for 50 years. Of the 11 military death sentences that have completed direct appeal, 9 (82%) have been reversed. On August 22, the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the death sentence of former Lance Corporal Kenneth G. Parker, the only Marine on the military's death row. The court also overturned one of Parker’s two murder convictions after finding that his guilt was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Judge J.A. Maksym, while condemning Parker's actions, said, “We have upset aspects of this verdict and will set aside the death penalty due to numerous and substantive procedural and legal failures at trial.” Parker is now facing a life sentence without parole at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Parker's co-defendant, Wade Walker, had also been sentenced to death but had his sentence reduced to life earlier. Since 1984, 11 out of 16 military death sentences have been overturned. The last military execution occurred in 1961.
Al Jazeera recently released a video of an interview with former Oklahoma death-row inmate Michael Selsor (pictured). Selsor was the most recent person executed in the U.S. and probably the inmate who served the longest time between conviction and execution of anyone in U.S. history. He was first sentenced to death in 1976 for murder and was imprisoned over 36 years prior to his execution on May 1, 2012. Although his sentence was reduced to life when Oklahoma's death penalty was overturned in 1976, he was re-sentenced to death for the same crime in 1998. The interview was conducted in 2010 and was the only interview Selsor granted. When asked about the difference between the death penalty and life without parole, Selsor said, “The only difference between death and life without parole is one you kill me now, the other one you kill me later. There's not even a shred of hope. There's no need to even try to muster up a seed of hope because you're just gonna die of old age in here....With the death penalty sentence I'm entitled to more appeals - the government's gonna pay for it. I don't have to do it myself if I don't have the money for a lawyer which I don't have. Instead I'm relying on public defenders to do my appeals." Selsor was also asked about how he was handling his inevitable execution: “I'm not gonna beg 'em to spare my life. I'll try to keep my head up with a little bit of dignity, and I'm gonna be buried out on Periwood Hill.” 