Abstract
In 1809, Maryland passed laws establishing degrees of murder and allowing death penalty only for individuals convicted of first degree murder. In 1908, some laws gave discretion to the judge, which meant that the judge could decide a sentence of life imprisonment. It was the same idea in 1916 when the jury was given the possibility to decide whether it applied death penalty or not. That is why the jury could decide a sentence of guilty «without capital punishment».
State laws also decided the type and the place of the executions. The method for executions was hanging. Hangings were made in public in the county where the offence took place until 1922. In 1922, another state law imposed the execution of the hangings at the Metropolitan Transition Center in Baltimore, also called Maryland Penitentiary, which was one of the securest prison of the USA; meaning that a private space for hangings was imposed. In 1955, the general assembly of Maryland changed the method of execution, replacing the hangings by lethal gas. As a consequence, a gas chamber was installed in the Penitentiary in 1956 and was used for the execution of four persons, from 1957 to 1961. In 1993 occurred a change in the law replacing gas injection by lethal injection. If a person had been sentenced before this change, this person could chose between gas injection and lethal injection. It led to the execution of John F. Thanos in 1994, the first execution since 1961.
