Today's Lehigh Valley Express-Times carries the editorial, "Send Pennsylvania's death penalty to the gallows."
Just before he left office, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell sent the Legislature a letter, complaining that the state’s death row had become a long-term public housing program.
Either shorten the appeals process or get rid of the death penalty, Rendell said.
We agree. With the latter proposition, that is. It’s time for Pennsylvania to take a meaningless capital punishment option off the books. The state has executed all of three people since it reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Everyone else has won a lesser sentence on appeal, died of natural causes, been exonerated, or just figured out that you can go on endlessly with the grim reaper at the door and a court-appointed lawyer on the case.
Besides, Rendell’s challenge isn’t really an either-or proposition — not as long as federal and state courts continue to recognize that defense attorneys and judges and prosecutors sometimes make mistakes, and that DNA evidence can undo a solid jury verdict.
What Pennsylvania has today is what New Jersey had before its Legislature and governor ditched capital punishment in 2007 — a system that taxes the public cruelly and unusually, raises false hopes for families of victims, and is, without question, inescapably flawed.
The burden of proof on that last issue has been met, most recently by the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s 2007 assessment of the death penalty. Pennsylvania and other states have exonerated convicted “murderers” when new evidence arose or witnesses recanted.
And:
Pennsylvania now has 217 people living on death row. So which is the better course — to find a way to execute the condemned more quickly, no matter the cost, or convert all death sentences to life without parole? (In Pennsylvania, a life sentence is just that; it does not permit parole.)
The paper's website carries an AP news item, "Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett signs his first two death warrants."
Tom Corbett has signed his first execution warrants as Pennsylvania's governor.
Corbett's office said today that he signed warrants for convicted murderers Dennis C. Reed, of Lawrence County, and Aquil Bond, of Philadelphia.
And:
Only three people have been executed in Pennsylvania since the death penalty was revived in the mid-1970s.
Coverage of former Governor Rendell's call for a review of the state's death penalty begins at the link.
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