American Bar Association report indicates major flaws in PA's death penalty

Link to full report on ABA website

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
OCTOBER 4, 2007

HARRISBURG – A blue-ribbon assessment panel appointed by the American Bar Association (ABA) announced today that Pennsylvania's capital punishment policies fail to meet basic standards established by the ABA, findings that the Pennsylvania Moratorium Coalition notes underscore the need to halt executions.

"This comprehensive review by some of the Commonwealth's best legal minds confirms that Pennsylvania's death penalty system is plagued with errors," said Andy Hoover, spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Moratorium Coalition and Community Organizer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. "Inadequate representation, the disturbing prospect of executing an innocent person, racism, and geographic disparities are undeniably present in our state's justice system.

"This is a wake-up call for Pennsylvania. It is time to take a step back from the death penalty while these biases and inaccuracies are addressed."

The ABA's report comes only two weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case examining the constitutionality of the 3-drug lethal injection cocktail most states, including Pennsylvania, use to administer the death penalty.

Using the ABA's protocols for examining the administration of capital punishment, the six-member Pennsylvania assessment team extensively researched the state's capital punishment laws and closely examined thirteen key areas of death penalty administration, including defense services, DNA and other biological testing, law enforcement tools and techniques, and racial and ethnic minorities.

Among the ABA panel's key findings were:

• There are insufficient safeguards in place to protect the innocent. Even after six exonerations from death row since the death penalty was reinstated, Pennsylvania has not implemented any policies that would make sending an innocent person to death row less likely.


• Pennsylvania fails to provide adequate defense attorneys for capital defendants. There is no statewide entity to train, select, or monitor capital defense attorneys, nor are attorneys adequately compensated or given access to proper expert and investigative resources.


• The Commonwealth failed to meet full compliance with any of ten recommendations designed to reduce the impact of race in the administration of the death penalty. In fact, Pennsylvania has failed to implement its own twenty-three recommendations put forth by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Justice System.

"Pennsylvanians deserve better than a justice system that is frought with error and bias. It's simply unacceptable," said the Rev. Walter Everett from Lewisburg, a Methodist minister whose son was murdered in 1987. "We cannot risk sending an innocent person to death row while the real culprit walks beside us on the street."

Everett is a member of the Pennsylvania Moratorium Coalition and Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights.

Currently, over 200 death row inmates are awaiting execution in Pennsylvania, though only three people have been executed—and six exonerated after evidence proved their innocence—since the death penalty was reinstated in 1974.

The Pennsylvania Moratorium Coalition supports a suspension of executions in Pennsylvania while all aspects of the death penalty as currently administered in Pennsylvania are reviewed and any resulting recommendations fully addressed. The Pennsylvania Moratorium Coalition is composed of diverse organizations from across the state of Pennsylvania. Regardless of their position on the death penalty, the organizations that make up the Pennsylvania Moratorium Coalition agree that the current practice of capital punishment in Pennsylvania needs to be reviewed because it is discriminatory and does not guarantee against the possibility of wrongful execution.

# # #

The Pennsylvania Moratorium Coalition includes:
American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania
American Friends Service Committee
Amnesty International USA
Evangelicals for Social Action
The Interfaith Alliance of Pennsylvania
Jewish Social Policy Action Network
League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania
Lutheran Advocacy Ministry in Pennsylvania
Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights
Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
Pennsylvania Catholic Conference
Pennsylvania Council of Churches
Pennsylvania Jewish Coalition
Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
Pennsylvania Prison Society
Witness to Innocence