In Pennsylvania

The Harrisburg Patriot-News reports, "State forms plan to ensure humane executions."

Pennsylvania officials are considering a change to the death penalty procedure designed to ensure executions by lethal injection meet constitutional protections against "cruel and unusual punishment."

The plan, a result of negotiations between Secretary of Corrections Jeffrey Beard and Rep. Daylin Leach, D-Montgomery, involves brain wave monitoring technology to ensure any inmate being put to death is fully unconscious before the final phase of an execution.

Corrections officials declined to comment on specifics of the pending agreement last week. It comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is weighing an inmates' challenge to lethal injection procedures in Kentucky and 35 other states, including Pennsylvania.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has an editorial, "Pa.'s death penalty."  The editorial is currently mis-indexed on the Inquirer site.  When corrected it should be at this link.

For 22 years, Nick Yarris sat on death row in Pennsylvania for the rape and murder of a Delaware County woman.

Yarris would have died in prison if not for a DNA test that showed he wasn't the rapist or killer.

His conviction was overturned in 2003, and last week he received the final installment of a $4 million settlement stemming from a malicious-prosecution lawsuit he brought against prosecutors in Delaware County.

Yarris' case is just the latest example of why Pennsylvania should follow New Jersey's lead and give the death penalty a dose of sodium thiopental.

Beyond the fact that there is scant evidence that the death penalty acts as a deterrent, the overriding reason to eliminate capital punishment is that innocent people may be executed for crimes they didn't commit.

DNA testing has helped exonerate 210 people wrongly convicted of various crimes in 30 states. Texas has set free 15 inmates wrongly convicted in Dallas alone since 2001, including a man released this month who had spent 27 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit.

What's going on in cowboy country?

At first blush, it appears that Texas is locking up innocent folks left and right. But a closer look shows that an innocent man was freed because a Dallas crime lab preserved evidence going back three decades.

Conversely, there are countless people rotting in prisons across the country who are innocent but can't mount a credible claim because the evidence no longer exists.

DNA testing has been around only since 1988. The test helps in only a tiny fraction of crimes - mainly those involving rape - where DNA evidence exists.