A pair of bills that would abolish the death penalty in Pennsylvania are headed to the state House, where supporters say they believe the measures would receive bipartisan support if they\u2019re put up for a vote.<\/p>\n
The prime sponsors, Rep. Chris Rabb (D-Philadelphia) and Rep. Russell Diamond (R-Lebanon), offered different rationales for ending capital punishment in the commonwealth, but both agreed it is morally fraught.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe death penalty is not justice,\u201d Rabb said in a news conference after the Judiciary Committee passed House Bill 99, introduced by Rabb, and House Bill 888, introduced by Diamond, both with 14-12 votes. All Republicans on the committee opposed the bills.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a policy failure. It is a system that is costly and ineffective, and most importantly, irreversible, and in a system as imperfect as ours that should give us all great pause. We know that wrongful convictions happen,\u201d said Rabb, who noted it was the fifth time he has sponsored the legislation.<\/p>\n
Diamond, speaking during the committee meeting Monday, said he approached the issue from a conservative angle. H.B. 888 has the support of three Republican lawmakers: Rep. Marla Brown of Lawrence County, Joseph D\u2019Orsie of York County, and Valerie Gaydos of Allegheny County.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe in the sanctity of all life \u2026 from conception to natural death. I believe in the promise of Christian redemption for all souls, even those permanently behind bars,\u201d Diamond said. \u201cI also believe that our criminal justice system is the self defense mechanism for a civilized society, but there is no element of self defense in executing someone already in captivity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Diamond added that among the hundreds of people sentenced to die in Pennsylvania in recent decades, 13 have been exonerated. Most recently, Daniel Gwynn, convicted of arson and murder in 1995, was cleared after nearly 30 years on death row.<\/p>\n
\u201cLaw enforcement, prosecutors, judges and juries sometimes make mistakes, but those can be appealed and reversed,\u201d Diamond said. \u201cA mistaken execution cannot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Democrats control the House with a narrow 102-101 majority. While House Democrats could pass either bill without Republican consent, support from both parties could help the measures if they are passed to the Senate, where Republicans maintain a 28-22 advantage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pennsylvania is among 27 states that still have the death penalty. Although 103 people remain on death row, the commonwealth has not executed anyone since 1999 due to factors including the lengthy appeals process and a significant number of exonerations and resentencings. For more than a decade, the state has had a moratorium on executions put in place by Gov. Tom Wolf and extended by Gov. Josh Shapiro.<\/p>\n
Advocates from the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, Amnesty International and the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation joined Rabb and other lawmakers to urge their colleagues to vote to abolish the death penalty.<\/p>\n
Jimmy Dennis spent 25 years on death row for the 1992 murder of a 17-year-old girl that he did not commit. After Gov. Tom Corbett signed his death warrant in 2011, a federal judge stayed his execution. His case ended up before Judge Anita B. Brody, who found Philadelphia police had ignored, lost or covered up evidence that exonerated Dennis.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI could be your brother, your sister, your mother, your best friend, anybody,\u201d Dennis said. \u201cWhat happened to me can happen to anybody. We cannot allow Pennsylvania to carry on with the death penalty, because we know that mistakes can be made.\u201d<\/p>\n
The death penalty is deeply inequitable along racial and economic lines, Veronica Miller, deputy legislative director for the ACLU-PA, noted.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just a punishment, it\u2019s a legacy of racial violence that continues to shape who lives and who dies in this country, a punishment so irreversible, administered so unevenly, cannot be reconciled within a system premised on equal justice under the law,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n
The mere existence of the death penalty perpetuates inequity in the justice system, she added. Enforcement is at a prosecutor\u2019s discretion, meaning its use varies from county to county. And when public defenders are called on to represent an indigent death penalty defendant, it places a disproportionate strain on an already underfunded system, Miller said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAbolishing the death penalty is not just about ending one form of punishment,\u201d Miller said. \u201cIt\u2019s about confronting the inequities that define it, making a necessary step toward a more equitable, accountable, effective criminal justice system.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking during the committee meeting, Rep. Tim Bonner (R-Mercer) said he opposed Rabb\u2019s bill as a former prosecutor who has prosecuted death penalty cases.<\/p>\n
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He noted that while the death penalty once had a \u201csordid reputation,\u201d the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 found it was being applied unconstitutionally, prompting the requirement that a jury find aggravating circumstances before imposing a capital sentence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bonner said it would be a mistake to abolish the death penalty entirely and suggested it should be reserved for only the most heinous crimes such as terrorism or school shootings.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo we not want the death penalty as at least a potential consideration, because the Supreme Court of the United States says that is appropriate when you have aggravated murders of that nature?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
Francis Harvey, the interim executive director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, told reporters at Rabb\u2019s news conference the reality is that efforts to reform the death penalty over the last 50 years has only proven that it\u2019s as error prone as it is inhumane.<\/p>\n
\u201cDeath sentences in the commonwealth are reserved, not for the worst of the worst of the worst, but for the poorest of the poor, for people with serious mental illnesses and intellectual disability and cases where the victim\u2019s life is valued more than other lives, that is, cases with white victims,\u201d Harvey said.<\/p>\n
She added that Pennsylvanians are increasingly unwilling to look the other way.<\/p>\n
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A poll taken last year by Susquehanna Polling and Research showed 58% of likely Pennsylvania voters preferred some version of a life prison sentence for a person convicted of murder over 29% who supported the death penalty. That was a decrease from a decade earlier, when 42% of likely voters said they preferred the death penalty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pair of bills that would abolish the death penalty in Pennsylvania are headed to the state House,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[79661,77469,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-178323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-crime-and-safety","tag-hardgate","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}