Maryland became the 18th state to abolish the death penalty Thursday, as Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) signed the bill he vied for into law. The law will not affect five prisoners currently on death row, but O’Malley will consider whether to commute their sentences, according to the Associated Press.

While Maryland is the sixth state to eliminate the penalty in as many years and the first to do so south of the Mason Dixon line, other southern states are headed in the opposite direction. Florida just passed a bill (not yet signed into law) to speed up the death penalty, with legislators saying, “this is not about guilt or innocence,” while Mississippi is slated to execute an inmate next week without having tested available DNA from the crime scene. Nonetheless, the general trend away from the death penalty may have constitutional implications.

Some high-schoolers may soon be able to vote in local elections, under a proposal being considered by one Maryland community.

Takoma Park, a suburb of Washington D.C., is currently weighing a proposal to lower its voting age for local elections to 16. Voters under the age of 18 would still be barred from voting in state and federal races.

The Huffington Post has more:

City Council member Tim Male, who proposed the initiative along with Seth Grimes, told Takoma Park Patch, “I really care about making elections easier… You meet young people who are really engaged but cannot vote.”

If passed, the lowered voting age could result in unforeseen benefits for Takoma Park. As the National Youth Rights Association points out, “Lowering the voting age to 16 will give the vote to people who have roots in a community, have an appreciation for local issues, and will be more concerned about voting than those just two years older.”

A public hearing on the amendment will be held April 8.

Takoma Park has a history of testing out innovative voting ideas. In 1991, community voters passed a referendum to allow non-citizens who were legal resident aliens to vote in local elections. That program has continued for the past 20 years, joined in the meantime by five other municipalities in Maryland.

White Student Union founder Matthew "Commander" Heimbach

Founded last year, the White Student Union has stirred significant controversy already. The organization has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In addition, its founder, Matthew Heimbach (who goes by the title “Commander Heimbach”), and fellow organizer Scott Terry interrupted a minority outreach panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference this month in order to defend slavery, noting that slaveholders provided blacks with food and shelter. Terry later told ThinkProgress that African-Americans “should be allowed to vote in Africa” and he’d be “fine” living in a society where blacks are permanently subservient to whites.

The Towerlight has more on the vigilante plan:

The controversial White Student Union has resurfaced on Towson’s campus with plans to conduct random nighttime patrols, which members say are for students’ protection.

Some members of the group, equipped with flashlights, will conduct on-campus safety walks, and female members will carry pepper spray in an attempt to protect students from various crimes like sexual assaults and robberies, WSU President Matthew Heimbach said. [...]

Heimbach said female members have also been enrolling in self-defense classes, and members have been going to local gun ranges as a group, but not in a “military way,” Heimbach said.

He said group members would carry no weapons on the nighttime walks.

One need look no further than the White Student Union’s blog to see why their vigilante operations could turn problematic. In a blog post last month entitled “Black Crime Wave Continues!“, the group writes:

The frequent robberies, sexual assaults, and acts of vandalism at Towson University are not often reported in the local media. For those who are not Towson students it seems hard to fathom that every single day black predators prey upon the majority white Towson University student body. White Southern men have long been called to defend their communities when law enforcement and the State seem unwilling to protect our people.

As a result, the post reads, “The WSU executive board has unanimously approved to make it mandatory for all female WSU members to begin taking some form of unarmed self defense training over the next month.”

Though no Towson faculty would sign on as a sponsor for the WSU, the administration allows the group to use university resources. As the group bragged in September 2012, it is “excited to report that it has taken one step closer toward becoming recognized by Towson University,” pointing to its profile on a university website.

Yesterday, a unanimous panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld a Maryland law requiring most gun owners to obtain a permit before they may carry a firearm outside of their home, business or their property. In the process, the court articulated a legal standard that could go a long way towards reining in the kind of ubiquitously armed society favored by fringe lobbying groups such as the National Rifle Association.

The Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which held for the first time in American history that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a firearm, was not a particularly coherent opinion. It lists numerous limits on the right to bear arms, but also holds that the single most deadly weapon in the nation — handguns – enjoy special constitutional protection above and beyond that enjoyed by other, less deadly weapons. Nearly 8 in 10 gun murders in the United States are committed with a handgun. Similarly, although the opinion forbids an outright ban on handguns inside the home, it provides much less clarity about the scope of the Second Amendment elsewhere. Much of the opinion strongly suggests that the right to bear arms is far less robust outside of a person’s own home.

The Fourth Circuit’s opinion threads this needle by applying a two-tiered legal standard to gun laws. The court suggests that a law which directly burdens the core right to keep a gun in the home is subject to “strict scrutiny,” the highest level of skepticism judges typically apply to laws. But a law which burdens gun possession outside of the home is subject to less skeptical review — what lawyers call “intermediate scrutiny.”

The implications of this shift is that it allows judges to be far more respectful to the concerns animating the elected officials who enact gun laws when they determine whether or not those laws are consistent with the Second Amendment. The court’s opinion highlights numerous arguments justifying Maryland’s limits on carrying guns in public. Among them:

• “Decreasing the availability of handguns to criminals via theft“: The court cites an explanation that “criminals in Maryland are constantly looking for ways to arm themselves with handguns, including by stealing them from others. It is not uncommon for criminals to obtain these guns during street altercations.”
• Preventing arguments from escalating into murders: Nearly half of all homicides occur after an argument or fight. As the court notes, reducing the number of guns in public places will decrease “the likelihood that basic confrontations between individuals would turn deadly.”
• Preventing fatal police errors: Contrary to the NRA’s claims that armed citizens will save lives by doling out vigilante justice to potential murders, the court notes that during a confrontation between police and a gunman “an additional person bearing a gun might cause confusion as to which side of the confrontation the person is on, which could lead to hesitation by the police officer and the potential for innocent victims, including the permit holder, innocent bystanders, and police officers.”
• Fostering good relationships between police and citizens: “If the number of legal handguns on the streets increased significantly, [police] officers would have no choice but to take extra precautions before engaging citizens, effectively treating encounters between police and the community that now are routine, friendly, and trusting, as high-risk stops, which demand a much more rigid protocol and a strategic approach.”
• Allowing police to focus their resources efficiently: “Increasing the number of people legally carrying handguns in the streets will also force [police] officers to spend more resources responding to reports about handgun sightings and engaging handgun carriers to ensure they are doing so lawfully.” Additionally, “[p]olice officers would also have a harder time identifying potential security risks if more people without good and substantial reason to carry a handgun were able to do so, making it more difficult to respond when necessary.”

To be clear, the Fourth Circuit’s conclusion that gun rights are less robust outside the four walls of a gun owner’s home is far from novel. Heller itself implies such a distinction, and previous court decisions drew a similar line to the one the Fourth Circuit relied on yesterday. If this line is ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court, however, it could go a long way towards keeping dangerous guns off America’s streets.

Earlier today, the Maryland House voted 82-56 to repeal the death penalty in that state. As the bill passed the state senate earlier this month, it is now virtually certain to become law. Repealing the death penalty is a top priority for Gov. Martin O’Malley (D).

Maryland is the sixth state in as many years to eliminate death sentences. As ThinkProgress recently explained, this trend away from the death penalty has constitutional implications. The Eighth Amendment forbids “cruel and unusual punishments,” so the death penalty stands on weaker footing nationwide as it becomes increasingly more and more “unusual.”

Earlier today, the Maryland senate voted 27-20 to repeal the death penalty in that state. The repeal bill, which is a top priority for Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), will now move on to the state house, where it appears likely to pass. The bill has 67 co-sponsors in the house, and only 71 are needed for it to pass.

This bill reflects a growing national trend away from the death penalty in states that are not Texas or a handful of other, mostly Southern states. As the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution forbids “cruel and unusual punishments,” Maryland’s bill also brings the death penalty one step closer to being declared unconstitutional, as the Constitution explicitly states that punishments that are increasingly “unusual” stand on increasingly weaker constitutional footing.

Attempts by Maryland Republicans to water down the state’s proposed death penalty repeal were defeated late Monday night. The Senate voted down 8 amendments to keep the death penalty in place for some people, including cop-killers and inmates who kill correctional officers while in prison. The repeal could get a full vote as early as today and head to the House of Delegates for debate next week.

Though Maryland has only executed 5 people since 1978, Republican lawmakers fought long into the evening to maintain exceptions to the repeal:

Republicans and Democrats offered heart-wrenching examples of murderers without remorse and officers who left behind widows and children. “But I’ve got to say, the death penalty was in place when those murders took place,” Raskin said. “It did not stop those murders.”

Other efforts to preserve Maryland’s already narrowly written death penalty law also failed as the discussion stretched late into the night. Senators unsuccessfully tried to carve out exemptions for contract killers, people who commit multiple murders, murders of children or murders committed during a kidnapping.

This is the second time Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) has pushed for repeal, after his first effort failed in 2007. Maryland would be the 18th state to repeal the death penalty.

Maryland already in effect invalidated the death penalty since a judge overturned the rules for execution procedures in 2006. Still, 5 inmates remain on death row, in a “politically forged purgatory” for almost 30 years.

Maryland is following a national trend away from the death penalty; last year, judges issued the lowest number of death sentences in 20 years, while executions have declined. Despite this progress, the US is still the only G7 country where it is legal to execute citizens.

Capital punishment has fallen out of favor with both Democrats and Republicans nationally, due to mounting evidence that innocent people have been sentenced to death, and the escalating costs of housing death row inmates and pursuing extended legal battles.