Comission on Capital Punishment Hears from Prominent Death Penalty Abolitionists ANNAPOLIS, MD (wypr) - In its first session yesterday, Maryland's Commission on Capital Punishment heard from two men who turned in their brothers, despite fears they could receive the death penalty. And the results were very different. WYPR's Joel McCord reports.

David Kaczynski says he was confronted with a horrific dilemma when he realized that his brother, Ted, could be the Unabomber who carried out a campaign of bombings and mail bombings between 1978 and 1995.

I realized any choice I make could result in somebody's death. If I do nothing, some innocent person might be killed by one of Ted's bombs. On the other hand, if I turn him in he could be executed. I think if anything could have deterred me from turning in my brother it was the death penalty. It would have had a chilling effect. 01:10

Bill Babbitt says he faced the same fears after he realized his brother had murdered a woman in California.

I turned my brother in because I wanted to get him the help he need, wanted to get him off the streets, wanted to prevent any more killings, deaths and I believed then that I did the right thing. But the government didn't do the right thing by my brother. 01:54

Babbitt's brother, Manny Babbitt, an African American Vietnam veteran with post traumatic stress disorder who killed a woman, was executed on his 50th birthday. Ted Kaczynski, considered a mathematical genius with paranoid schizophrenia, whose bombs killed three and injured 23 is serving a life term.

David Kaczynski says his brother and Bill Babbitt's brother had only one thing in common.

They both got all white juries. But Manny Babbitt was an African American. And certainly I think if you look at the statistics, if you look at the numbers, if you look at particular cases, it's unavoidable to conclude that a person of color is more likely to be executed in the United states than someone like me. 03:20

Babbitt, who lives in California, is on the board of directors of Murder Victims Families for Human Rights, an anti death penalty group. Kaczynski lives in New York, where he is executive director of New Yorkers against the Death Penalty. They were in Annapolis yesterday to argue against the death penalty.

I think reasonable people can disagree about the theory of the death penalty, but when it comes to looking at the system for applying it I think we all realize the system makes mistakes. It's unjust, it's unequal and it costs tons and tons of money that could be spent more productively on beefing up law enforcement, putting more police on the street and helping the people who have been hurt by these crimes. 04:16

The 22-member state commission was created during the last General Assembly session to study possible disparities in the way the death penalty is applied, the risk of innocent people being executed and to compare the costs of trials and appeals in the death penalty cases with the costs of life without parole prosecutions.

Death penalty opponents said they hope the results of the commission's work will make it easier to repeal the death penalty when lawmakers return in January. Repeal bills have died on tie votes in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee during the last two sessions.

Delegate Sandy Rosenberg, a death penalty opponent and member of the commission, said New Jersey repealed its death penalty after the state's highest court found sharp disparities in how it was applied.

Judge Deborah Poritz, the former chief judge of the New Jersey Supreme Court, told the commission the disparities weren't so much racial as jurisdictional. In 2006, her last year on the court, there were 80 murders in Essex County, which contains the city of Newark, but no death penalty prosecutions.

Whereas 17 people who had committed murder in Cumberland County, a low population rural county, there were six prosecutions. 19:01

Ray Paternoster, a University of Maryland professor whose study of death penalty statistics showed wide variations between jurisdictions in the state, said it was more likely that prosecutors would seek the death penalty if a victim were white.

Whatever the commission recommends, it will be difficult to change minds in the all important Senate Judiciary Committee.

I'm Joel McCord, reporting in Annapolis for 88.1, WYPR.
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