The president of the NAACP is scheduled to meet with Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley today, where he is expected to push for a repeal of the death penalty in the Old Line State, writes the Baltimore Sun:

Gov. Martin O’Malley is set to meet with NAACP president Benjamin Jealous Thursday morning to discuss topics including repealing the death penalty, according to a spokeswoman for the governor.

The meeting, planned for 9:30 a.m. at the state house, was granted at Jealous’s request. “They are meeting,” said O’Malley spokeswoman Raquel Guillory. “The death penalty will be a topic of discussion.”

The NAACP will hold a news conference after the meeting. This year, the civil rights organization plans a major push for full repeal of the death penalty.

O’Malley was on board with a repeal in 2009, but when it became clear that he did not have the votes, he instead sided with legislation that severely restricts its use. Maryland has not handed down any death sentences since 2004. Earlier this week Amnesty International wrote that O’Malley should lead his state in ending the use of capital punishment, much like he pushed for same-sex marriage:

For the sake of his legacy, and for the sake of promoting and leading us to a more humane form of criminal justice, Governor O’Malley needs to accomplish death penalty repeal in 2013. And it won’t even be that hard.

Not far south, Virginia remains the state that has put the second-highest number of people to death, behind only Texas. Like Maryland, though, no death row inmates were executed in 2012, mostly due to appeals.

As for D.C., we have no death penalty and in 1992 rejected its imposition in a referendum that was mandated by Congress. In 1997, the D.C. Council rejected a bill proposed by then-Mayor Marion Barry that would have allowed for the use of the death penalty when police officers are killed.