the death penalty in pennsylvania ...

Know the facts about the death penalty in PA (and share them with others!)

There are serious concerns about unfairness and inaccuracy in Pennsylvania’s death penalty. We need a moratorium on executions in Pennsylvania while issues of fairness can be adequately studied and the resulting recommendations fully addressed. Now is the time for the legislature to do a full assessment and tackle this problem head on. Consider the facts: Innocent lives in the balance Since 1973, at least 123 death row inmates have been released after evidence proved their innocence. Six men have been wrongfully convicted and released from Pennsylvania’s death row, twice as many people as the state has executed. In 2003, Nick Yarris was released after spending 21 years on death row. Nick was the victim of a jailhouse snitch, prosecutorial misconduct, and botched DNA testing before he was finally released. Inadequate defense for the poor More than 90 percent of Pennsylvania’s death row prisoners were too poor to afford a lawyer for their initial trial. The Pennsylvania State Supreme Court released a report in March 2003 which emphasized that the state is failing to provide adequate counsel to indigent capital defendants. After sending an individual to death row, Pennsylvania provides no state funding for post-conviction legal defense. Racially skewed Of the more than 200 death row prisoners in Pennsylvania, almost 70 percent are people of color. Of states with more than 10 people on death row, Pennsylvania and Texas have the largest percentage of minorities on death row nationwide. Independent researchers found that, even after controlling for case differences, blacks in Philadelphia were 3.9 times more likely to get the death penalty than other defendants who committed similar murders. A lottery of geography Where a crime happens can be as important as what type of crime is committed in determining who lives and who dies. Of those sentenced to death in Pennsylvania, more than half come from Philadelphia County, which accounts for only 14 percent of the state's population. Although Philadelphia's murder rate is only about 3 times greater than that of Harrisburg, the proportion of those condemned to death is 11 times greater in Philadelphia. While Philadelphia's District Attorney asks for the death penalty in almost all cases that technically qualify for such a prosecution, Pittsburgh's DA does so in about a fourth of such cases. Pennsylvanians want a justice system that is fair A recent poll shows that 72% of Pennsylvanians favor suspending the death penalty until questions of fairness can be studied. The same poll also found that 69% of Pennsylvanians agree that the poor are more likely than the wealthy to be executed and 51% agree that blacks are more likely than whites to be executed. Even Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum said recently, "I felt very troubled about cases where someone may have been convicted wrongly. I would certainly suggest there probably should be some further limits on what we use it for." Almost 200 organizations throughout Pennsylvania have called for a moratorium on executions, including professional associations, small businesses, churches, and city councils P E N N S Y L V A N I A N S * F O R * A L T E R N A T I V E S * T O * T H E * D E A T H * P E N A L T Y main page - news - action alerts - join PADP - mission - history - chapters - the death penalty - death penalty in PA © 2007, PADP