And here I thought we didn't have a death penalty...isn't that why they decided to try the sniper from 2002 in VA, so they could ask for the death penalty?
Maryland technically still has the death penalty, although for all practical purposes it doesn't exist here anymore. They've only carried out five executions since the DP was reinstated, and one of those was a volunteer. Since I've lived here there have been two executions, Steven Oken in 2004 and Wesley Baker in 2005. Oken was a monster, truly one of the worst of the worst, while Baker was a run of the mill criminal who shot a woman in an armed-robbery gone bad and was very unlucky in the courts.
The reason that John Allen Muhammed was tried in VA was because the way MD's death penalty statute is written he wasn't eligible for it since he wasn't the triggerman. In MD even if you're guilty of Murder One under the felony murder rule you aren't DP eligible unless you're a "principle in the first degree" (aka triggerman.) The only exception to this is in murder for hire cases. VA also follows through on its death sentences, whereas most MD death sentences languish forever in appeals before some pro-criminal judge overturns them.