Within two weeks, two cities in the United States have executed two men. One of the men was in Baltimore, Maryland and the other in San Quentin, California. Both men were on death row for more than five years for murder.

Wesley Eugene Baker, 47, died on Monday, December 5, 2005, at 9:18 pm. Baker was convicted after shooting a woman to death thirteen years ago.

He was the fifth man put to death in Maryland by lethal injection since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

Jane Tyson was robbed and shot once in the head by Baker in front of her two grandchildren at Westview Mall on June 6, 1991.

Martin E. Andree expressed his feelings about the death of his sister and the death of Eugene Baker shortly after the execution by the phone from his Florida home.

"It's over for us and it's over for him. The wound will heal. Now, there won't be any more picking the scab. Every time there was an appeal, it was like peeling the scab off of the wound," said Andree in the Baltimore Sun.

Baker's last meal consisted of breaded fish, pasta marinara, green beans, orange fruit punch, bread and milk. Before hi

death, his mother, Delores Williams, his sister, brother, and a childhood friend joined him.

Protesters gathered outside Central Booking building in Baltimore on the night of Baker’s execution.

According to The Baltimore Sun, Eugene Baker grew up in the Waverly area of Baltimore, Maryland. In the past few weeks,

Baker's lawyers had stepped up the pace of more than 10 years of appeals, arguing that Maryland's death penalty is skewed by race and geography and that evidence of Baker's abusive and chaotic childhood in East Baltimore should have been introduced at the sentencing phase of his trial in 1992.

Stanley "Tookie" Williams, 51, died on Tuesday, December 13, 2005, at 12:23 am. He was convicted of murdering four people with a shotgun in 1979.

Williams was the 12th man executed by the state of California since voters reinstated the death penalty more than a quarter-century ago.

According to The Los Angeles Times, a family member of one of Williams's victim, Lora Owens hoped that watching Williams die would soften her pain by allowing her to "let it go" just a bit. Lora Owens's stepson was gunned down at a convenience store in 1979.

Much debate still continues in the US as to whether the death penalty constitutes an appropriate punishment, at least to the most heinous crimes. In recent years, the debate has been further fueled by the use of new technologies which have shown that a large proportion of people sentenced to death are, indeed, innocent.