US governor freezes executions

Lethal injection is the most common method of execution

The governor of Maryland in the United States has imposed a moratorium on the death penalty until a report into whether there is racial bias in executions is completed.

Death penalty USA

38 states have the death penalty

More then 3,700 inmates are on death row

Execution can be by hanging, electrocution, gassing, firing squad or lethal injection

Four states still use the electric chair

The governor, Parris Glendening, issued a stay on the execution of Wesley Baker, an African American, and all other pending executions in the state citing "reasonable questions" about the integrity of capital punishment in the state and across the country.

Baker is one of 13 men - nine of them black - awaiting execution in Maryland.

The study - financed with the support of legislature - is being carried out by a researcher at the University of Maryland, and is due to be completed in autumn next year.

Under pressure

Mr Glendening - a supporter of death penalty for especially heinous crimes - requested the study two years ago, after apparently studying Maryland's statistics of inmates on a death row.

Execution factfile

1999 - 97 executions

1951 - 105 executions

95 people released from death row since 1973

66% of Americans support the death penalty

80% take place in southern states

Opponents of the death penalty argue that executions are imposed on racial minorities in disproportionately high numbers.

Stephanie Gibson, member of the Maryland Coalition Against State Executions says that the statistics show that the majority of those on death row have killed a white person, even though an overwhelming 80% of the state's homicide victims are black people.

Mr Glendening said he would not lift the moratorium until the study is reviewed by the state legislature, which he expected would be completed in about a year's time.

Parole demands

Wesley Baker, 44, was sentenced to die by lethal injection for the murder of Jane Tyson, who was shot in a Baltimore County shopping centre in 1991.

Baker does not deny being present when the victim was killed, but his attorneys say there is not enough evidence to show he fired the gun.

They demand that the governor either to commute his death sentence to life without parole, or to delay his execution until after the release of the study.

Several hundred people have been put to death in the US by state and federal authorities since the country's Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in the late 1970's.

Illinois is the only other US state which has imposed a moratorium on death penalty.