Gov. Josh Shapiro asks Pennsylvania lawmakers to abolish the death penalty

Gov. Josh Shapiro called on the state legislature to end the death penalty in Pennsylvania on Thursday, marking the first time a governor has formally asked the General Assembly to abolish the controversial practice.

Inside a West Philadelphia church, Shapiro also said he would extend the moratorium on executions that was put in place eight years ago by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf.

“The commonwealth shouldn’t be in the business of putting people to death, period,” Shapiro said. “At its core, for me, this is a fundamental statement of morality, of what’s right and wrong, in my humble opinion. And I believe as governor that Pennsylvanians must be on the right side of this issue.”

Pennsylvania’s last execution, in 1999, was the lethal injection of Gary Heidnik, who raped and tortured six women he kept chained in the basement of his Franklinville home, then killed and dismembered two of them.

Shapiro, a Democrat and the former attorney general, previously supported the death penalty “for some of the most heinous cases,” he said. But after recent conversations with advocacy groups and victims’ families who opposed the measure, he said, his stance has shifted.

After the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in 2018, Shapiro said he believed the killer “deserved to be put to death.”

But some of the victims’ families didn’t want that.

“I was truly moved by their courage and by their grace,” Shapiro said. “That has stayed with me, all of these conversations have stayed with me.”

He also recalled speaking last year with Lorraine “Ms. DeeDee” Haw, an organizer with the Coalition to Abolish Death by Incarceration, who told him she did not believe her brother’s killer should be put to death.

Pennsylvania is one of 27 states that still have capital punishment on the books. New Jersey was the first state to abolish executions, in 1965, and several states have followed, including Maryland and Virginia.

Thursday’s announcement is the “first step” toward ending the death penalty in Pennsylvania, Shapiro and lawmakers said.

Democratic State Rep. Chris Rabb said he plans to reintroduce legislation to abolish the death penalty, and on Thursday he circulated a memo asking colleagues to sign on as cosponsors.

But the bill — which has previously languished in committee — would need to pass the House, with its razor-thin Democratic majority, as well as the GOP-controlled Senate before reaching Shapiro’s desk.

The Attorney General’s Office said it will continue to evaluate death-penalty cases and “still believes the best avenue to change any law” is through the legislature.

Until the law is changed, Shapiro said, he will not sign any death warrants. There are 101 people on death row in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania once performed the third-highest number of executions in the country and had the nation’s fourth-largest death row for two decades, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In recent years, though, its use has declined.

Since 1976, the commonwealth has carried out only three executions, all under Republican Gov. Tom Ridge.

Still, state House Republicans signaled Thursday that they were not ready to join Shapiro’s call for an end to the death penalty, saying, “Now is not the time to stop holding criminals to the highest levels of accountability for the most heinous crimes.”

“Removing this measure of accountability and deterrence from prosecutorial discretion is at best tone deaf to the concerns of Pennsylvanians, and at worst, disrespectful to the victims of the most serious crimes in our society,” GOP House members said in a statement.

And Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman called Shapiro’s position “rash” and said any changes to the law must take into account the perspectives of families of murder victims and the views of law enforcement officials.

Shapiro’s announcement came just days after he declined to sign his first death warrant — for 27-year-old Rahmael Sal Holt, who shot and killed a police officer near Pittsburgh in 2017.

The legal history of Pennsylvania’s death penalty is complex. In 1972, the state Supreme Court ruled that the commonwealth’s death-penalty sentencing procedures were unconstitutional, and death-row sentences were judicially reduced to life.

The legislature reinstated the death penalty in 1974, but three years later that law was also found unconstitutional. The legislature passed a revised version of the law allowing executions in 1978. Wolf placed a moratorium on executions in 2015, citing concerns about wrongful convictions and racial bias.

For those same reasons, civil rights groups have long called for an end to the death penalty. According to the ACLU, people of color have accounted for 43% of all executions since 1976, and represent 55% of those awaiting execution.

Racial bias was cited as a factor in what prosecutors now say was the wrongful conviction of Alexander McClay Williams, a Black teenager who at 16 became the youngest person in Pennsylvania history to be executed.

In 1931, an all-white jury convicted Williams in the stabbing death of a white woman. But a Delaware County judge overturned his conviction after prosecutors raised questions about his guilt, and he was posthumously vindicated last year.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has said he would never seek the death penalty, and has fiercely advocated for its abolition, though his spokesperson, Jane Roh, said the office has no blanket policy on the issue.

In 2019, Krasner’s office filed a brief with the state Supreme Court, asking it to invoke its King’s Bench power to declare the death penalty unconstitutional.

The Attorney General’s Office, under Shapiro, filed a brief opposing Krasner’s petition. Ultimately, the high court effectively kicked the issue back to the General Assembly.

On Thursday, Krasner said he was surprised to hear of Shapiro’s new position but welcomed it. He called on the Attorney General’s Office to reconsider its stance.

The Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association, which represents prosecutors in the state’s 67 counties, said in a statement that it “respectfully disagrees” with Shapiro.

”In Pennsylvania, every death penalty case is exhaustively examined by a jury, a judge, and the appellate courts,” the group said.

Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer, however, said he fully supports Shapiro’s stance. Since the 2015 moratorium took effect, he said, the state “is making a promise that really is not true,” when it pursues the death penalty in criminal cases.

”I don’t think the death penalty is a deterrent for people anymore,” said Stollsteimer, who has not sought capital punishment in any case since taking office in 2019.

Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele is seeking the death penalty against Rafiq Thompson, a West Philadelphia man accused of killing his pregnant girlfriend at a King of Prussia gas station. The case marked the first time Steele filed a capital case, and he said he did so because of Thomas’ clear disregard for life.

Bucks County DA Matt Weintraub has also pursued the death penalty — most recently in a case against Christopher Gillie, a serial arsonist who set a fire that killed his girlfriend’s elderly stepfather. Earlier this month, Gillie pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in exchange for an agreement that prosecutors would withdraw their request for a death sentence.

Staff writer Jeremy Roebuck contributed to this article.