Poll: Where Do You Stand on the Death Penalty?

The country witnessed the execution of two men Wednesday, both of whom were convicted of murder, the same day an Anne Arundel County judge ruled a prisoner charged with killing a state correctional officer would continue to be a death-penalty case.

• Lawrence Russell Brewer, 44, was executed and declared dead at 6:21 p.m. CT in Texas for his role in the 1998 dragging death of James Byrd Jr. USA Today called the murder "one of the most heinous hate crimes in modern America."
• In Georgia, Troy Davis was executed and declared dead at 11:08 p.m. for the 1989 murder of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer. Hundreds of thousands of Davis supporters signed petitions delaring his innocence and called for a stay of execution, though the Supreme Court denied the request, according to CBS News.

Locally, an Anne Arundel County judge ruled that Lee Edward Stephens, 32, still would face the death penalty if convicted in the 2006 stabbing death of Cpl. David McGuinn at the now-closed House of Correction in Jessup, according to The Baltimore Sun.

Defense lawyers argued that DNA evidence used in the case doesn't meet the requirements of Maryland's death-penalty law, the Sun reported.

On Tuesday, the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that standards jurors use to determine whether or not the death penalty should be imposed are constitutional, according to The Washington Post.

Current death row inmate Jody Lee Miles argued that the process for weighing the circumstances of the crime is unconstitutional, claiming it doesn't use the court's highest threshold of certainty, according to the Post.

Miles is one of five men on death row in Maryland, though all executions have been put on hold until the state approves new execution procedures.

The last person executed in Maryland was Wesley Eugene Baker, who died by lethal injection in 2005 for the 1991 murder of Jane Tyson, according to an article in the Sun.