Pa. could enforce death penalty when Gov. Wolf leaves office | Opinion

Many people are rightfully shocked by the recent execution spree carried out by the federal government in what appeared to be the last administration’s attempt to kill as many people as possible before being replaced. Those same people are hopeful that the Biden administration will impose a moratorium on federal executions.

Unfortunately for those executed and their loved ones, it will be too little too late.

Despite the appearance of hurried activity, a closer analysis of the barbaric actions of the Trump administration reveals that they were years in the making, and result in part from a combination of the well-intentioned actions of previous administrations less enamored with executions and our inability as a society to confront the moral truth that the state should not kill. The cold fact is, that when an administration that does not support capital punishment doesn’t kill folks, a backlog builds up. Imposing a moratorium merely delays executions in the hope that society will evolve. An unfortunate side effect is that a moratorium also allows the general public to ignore the issue and pretend that the death penalty no longer exists, only to be painfully reminded by a more regressive administration that it is still very much alive.

We are presently in just such a lull in Pennsylvania. At the beginning of his term, Gov. Tom Wolf took the vital and much-needed action of placing a moratorium on executions in Pennsylvania. It was clear at the time, and subsequent studies have demonstrated, that the application of the death penalty in Pennsylvania was racially unjust and deeply flawed. The moratorium has served to prevent executions, but it has not ended the death penalty. Prosecutors in every county except for Philadelphia still seek the death penalty. There are still more than 150 people awaiting execution in the commonwealth and 50 cases awaiting trial where the prosecution is seeking death. Many people facing execution have exhausted their appeals. They are ripe for execution if the moratorium is lifted.

As a result, Pennsylvania is a complete outlier among Northeastern states. We are alone in the Mid-Atlantic in imposing capital punishment. Worse yet, the death penalty in our state is applied in a more racially disproportionate way than many of the supposedly more racist Southern states. The color of a defendant’s and victim’s skin plays a crucial and unacceptable role in deciding who receives the death penalty in America. Nationally, people of color have accounted for a disproportionate 43% of total executions since 1976 and 5% of those currently awaiting execution. In Pennsylvania, that figure is 70%, the third-highest percentage of any state.

In addition to being morally wrong, and racially disproportionate, the application of the death penalty is broken. There have been 174 exonerations of people sentenced to death in this country. Each one sentenced to die for a crime they did not commit. Even if guilty, those being executed are typically not the worst of offenders. They are the most vulnerable. It is often the severely mentally ill, chronically abused, and/or intellectually disabled who are executed.

The imposition of a death sentence is more likely to result from inadequate representation than it is from particularly heinous facts. The death penalty makes no financial sense, either. By seeking to impose the death penalty, prosecutors in Pennsylvania are making a choice to spend our limited financial resources on retribution. There is zero evidence the death penalty makes us safer. The average capital case costs many times more than a noncapital homicide prosecution. Pennsylvania lacks resources to provide adequate education, social services, and health care for its citizens. Yet, precious tax dollars are wasted on a morally wrong, deeply flawed activity.

Pennsylvanians have been spared facing these facts by Gov. Wolf’s moratorium. But the shameful series of executions undertaken by the Trump administration illustrate how fragile that moratorium is. Unless immediate action is taken by the Pennsylvania legislature to end capital punishment, we could be facing the exact same scenario in our state. All it would take is a regressive death penalty proponent in the governor’s mansion to end the moratorium and begin signing death warrants regularly. We as a society cannot allow this to happen.

Patrick J. Egan is the board president of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation and a partner at Fox Rothschild LLP.