The Pittsburg Post-Gazette has two news articles on the state of capital punishment. First, "States finding death penalty's costs prohibitive," by Daniel Malloy.
Costs of lengthy trials, repeated appeals and specialized housing add up, making it more difficult for states to pay for inmates who have been sentenced to death than to life in prison. As many states grapple with budget crises, lawmakers increasingly are scrutinizing the death penalty on fiscal, rather than philosophical, grounds.
Earlier this year, the New Mexico state Legislature passed a bill to abolish the death penalty and Maryland limited its application to cases in which prosecutors present DNA or biological evidence, a video of the crime or a confession.
Measures to abolish the penalty are pending in five other states, including Colorado, where the state House on Wednesday passed a bill to eliminate the death penalty and use some of the resulting savings to solve cold murder cases.
No such legislative effort is under way in Pennsylvania.
State Rep. Don Walko, D-North Side, chairman of the House judicial subcommittee on courts, said he would be open to asking the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing to study the death penalty's costs. But he said such a review would have to wait until after the commission finishes another study on mandatory minimum sentences, which is due in November.
Mr. Walko said he remains a supporter of the death penalty, but media reports about the costs "did pique my interest."
A study by The Urban Institute, a nonpartisan economic and social policy research organization, found that a death penalty case prosecuted in Maryland cost $1.9 million more than a homicide case resulting in life imprisonment.
The American Civil Liberties Union in Northern California estimated the figure at $1.1 million in that region. A study by the Kansas state Legislature found that trying a death penalty case, on average, costs $500,000 more than a similar case resulting in a life sentence in that state.
The article notes that Pennsylvania has carried out three executions since 1978.
Torsten Ove writes, "For those convicted, it's a long road to the death penalty."
Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. has until June 1 to decide whether to seek the death penalty against the man accused of killing three police officers.
That's the date of Richard Poplawski's formal arraignment, when his lawyer needs to know the district attorney's intention.
In the meantime, dueling online petitions have emerged in the public debate over what should happen to Mr. Poplawski, 22, who is accused of killing Pittsburgh Officers Paul J. Sciullo II, Stephen J. Mayhle and Eric G. Kelly and wounding another during a shootout April 4 in Stanton Heights. And it's a mismatch.
As of yesterday, those asking the district attorney's office to seek the death penalty numbered more than 35,000.
Those asking for life in prison: 12.
But it probably won't make much difference what Mr. Zappala decides. Even if Mr. Poplawski ends up being convicted and sentenced to death, he's not likely to be executed for many years, if ever.
That's because the state, which hasn't executed anyone since Gary Heidnik in 1999, has what Gov. Ed Rendell has called a "de facto" moratorium on executions caused by endless appeals.
It's the same across the country. The average appeals process in capital cases is now 12.7 years, longer than it's ever been.
Pennsylvania has never executed anyone who had taken advantage of the full appeals process in both the state and federal court systems. The three prisoners executed here since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978 all waived their appeal rights.
So unless Mr. Poplawski does that, he will probably join the state's 228 death row inmates in a permanent state of limbo.
"This is not a problem that is slowly getting better," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. "I think it's a given that there won't be any quick resolution."
Exonerations, like those that led to a moratorium on executions in Illinois in 2000, have cast doubt on the entire system.
"The courts are proceeding more carefully with these cases," said Mr. Dieter.
The appeals process is especially lengthy because death row cases have two levels of judicial review. In Pennsylvania, an inmate's petition for a new trial is first heard by the state's appellate courts, up to the state Supreme Court.
An inmate who has exhausted those appeals has the option of repeating the process through a habeas corpus petition in the federal courts.
Each stage of the process can take years. With 3,300 inmates on death row in America -- nearly all of them filing appeals -- the courts are a bottleneck. State clemency hearings can add more time.
"Even in Texas, cases are taking 10 years," said Mr. Dieter. That state historically executes more prisoners than others.
The federal criminal justice system has its own death penalty, but that process is also tedious. The last federal prisoner executed was Louis Jones, put to death in 2003 for the murder of a military private kidnapped from an Air Force base in Texas.
Today's Pittsburg Tribune-Review has, "Killers languish on Pennsylvania death row as appeals drag on, stats show," by Bobby Kerlik.
Accused cop killer Richard Poplawski is more likely to die from cancer than lethal injection.
At least that's what statistics suggest.
Pennsylvania's death row holds 224 convicted killers, the fourth-most in the country. Pennsylvania has executed only three killers since the death penalty returned in 1978 and none in the past decade.
During that same period, 20 death row inmates have died of natural causes.
Gov. Ed Rendell said he would sign a death warrant "without a minute's thought" if Poplawski, 22, of Stanton Heights is sent to death row for killing three Pittsburgh police officers April 4 outside his home.
But prosecutors have failed to get death sentences in the past three trials involving the slayings of police officers in Western Pennsylvania.
"You have a stalemate. People want the death penalty but don't want to be like Texas," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "A lot of states don't seem to get anything from the death penalty but are not willing to get rid of it."
Rendell, a former Philadelphia district attorney, has signed all 85 death warrants that crossed his desk in the past six years. A new warrant is generated when a state appeals court upholds a death sentence, and the governor must sign it in 30 days.
That is happening less frequently. Former Govs. Tom Ridge and Mark Schweiker signed a combined 238 warrants during the eight years before Rendell took office.
"The law provides for an appeal process," said Rendell spokesman Michael Smith, who called the governor a strong proponent of the death penalty. "He's abiding by the system we have in place."
Ron Eisenberg, deputy district attorney in Philadelphia, blames a slowdown in the courts.
"Those appeals are just taking too long. Sometimes they last longer than 25 years," said Eisenberg, whose office prosecuted about half the killers on death row. "In state court, those rulings have been reasonably timely, but our cases seem to take quite a long time in federal court."
Comments