Governor Tom Wolf recently announced a moratorium on the use of the death penalty in Pennsylvania calling the practice “error prone, expensive and anything but infallible.” Wolf plans to maintain the moratorium until a legislative study, which has been in the works for at least 4 years, is completed.
Wolf is asking to study the process and to determine its cost and efficacy. He’s not granting commutations of death sentences to the 186 prisoners currently sitting on death row. He simply wants to better understand how the system works.
Pennsylvania is one of 32 states that still imposes the death penalty. Since 1976, Pennsylvania has executed 3 individuals. A total of 1,043 individuals have been executed in Pennsylvania since the 17th century.
But consider the bigger picture: The United States is only one of 37 nations that use capital punishment. All European countries have abolished this practice. With its retention of the death penalty, the United States is in the company of countries like Afghanistan, China, Iran, Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
Wolf is concerned about what he calls the “error-prone system”. At least 150 people nationwide, have been exonerated from death row, including six men from Pennsylvania in the last few decades. It is unknown how many people have been wrongly executed in the United States over the years. A team of legal experts, led by law professor Samuel Gross, found that 4.1% of death row prisoners are falsely convicted. The study was peer reviewed and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A moratorium is not unprecedented. The Supreme Court had instituted a 4-year moratorium on the death penalty in 1972; the moratorium was in place while the court determined how a degree of consistency could be applied to sentencing. The court ruling required states to examine their own implementation of capital punishment to ensure it was not administered in a capricious or discriminatory manner.
Just in the past two years, Wolf is the fourth governor to institute a moratorium on executions. Colorado, Oregon and Washington governors have cited similar concerns over the use of the death penalty in implementing their own statewide moratoriums.
The death penalty is not a proven form of deterrence. The best way to illustrate this is by comparing state murder rates; murder rates, per capita, of states that impose the death penalty are consistently higher than those that do not.
Perhaps its lack of effectiveness stems from its inconsistent use. After all, not everyone who commits first-degree murder is sentenced to death. Many factors contribute to sentencing and fairness is not necessarily one of them. Studies show that the defendant’s race often has more influence than even the severity of the crime.
Just as judging a black defendant harsher than a white defendant is wrong, valuing one victim over another is also wrong. Thus, the death penalty should never be used in an attempt to weigh the value of one life over another.
The death penalty is costly; a study shows that seeking the death penalty can cost an additional $1 million to the costs of prosecution. Another study found that cases applying the death penalty lasted six more days in court and took much longer to resolve than life without parole.
There has been backlash. The Pennsylvania State Troopers Association is concerned that accused murderer Eric Frein, who took the life of one state trooper and critically injured another, will be spared a death sentence because of the moratorium. The administration has affirmed that the moratorium would not prevent the jury from sentencing Frein to death. The Association is understandably distraught over these heinous acts, but will imposing the death penalty, which obviously did not deter the crime, be simply perceived as retribution?
District attorneys have also expressed anger over Wolf’s decision. Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams has filed a lawsuit against the administration calling it a “lawless act”. Although his lawsuit suggests an over-reach, it may be more to do with political firepower. The death penalty is an effective tool that prosecutors can use when defending their tough stance on crime to perspective voters.
The death penalty is ineffective, costly and inhumane. Wolf is not abolishing the process; he simply wants to study how the system is working. Pushing the pause button on a practice that has been abolished in almost every other industrialized nation is a reasonable action and should be praised.