Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. called for Marlyand to abolish its death penalty today. He noted flaws in the system and the possibility that innocent persons could be executed.

His Press Release stated that due to the system's fallibility, "capital punishment could come only at the "intolerable cost of executing, every so often, the wrong person."

Here is the text of Curran's open letter to the Governor, Lt. Governor and General Assembly. Here is the text of the statement he made at the Press Conference today.

Attorney General Curran recognizes that the death penalty is error-prone, immoral, biased and a fundamental violation of human rights. Today he reminds us that politics, at its best, is about principled leadership. Eight of the 12 people on Maryland's death row are black, and every single person on death row was convicted of killing a white victim - despite the fact that 80 percent of homicides in Maryland involve black or Latino victims. A study recently released by the University of Maryland found that Maryland's death penalty discriminates not only on the basis of the victim's race, but also on geography - most death penalty convictions occur in largely white, suburban Baltimore County.