According to a new report from a team of inves­ti­ga­tors spon­sored by the American Bar Association (ABA), flaws in Pennsylvania’s death penal­ty sys­tem are so per­va­sive that the state risks exe­cut­ing an inno­cent per­son. ​“The prob­lems found in this assess­ment strike at the very heart of Pennsylvania’s jus­tice sys­tem,” stat­ed ABA pres­i­dent-elect H. Thomas Wells, Jr. The five-mem­ber Pennsylvania assess­ment team that con­duct­ed the review urged a series of impor­tant death penal­ty reforms designed to improve cap­i­tal defense rep­re­sen­ta­tion and reduce the like­li­hood of false con­fes­sions, crime-lab errors, wit­ness misiden­ti­fi­ca­tion and racial dis­par­i­ties. In addi­tion to the reform rec­om­men­da­tions, the ABA called on Governor Ed Rendell to order a more com­pre­hen­sive study of Pennsylvania’s death penalty.

Among the report’s key rec­om­men­da­tions are the following:

  • Pennsylvania should ensure that it pro­vides ade­quate oppor­tu­ni­ties for death row inmates to prove their inno­cence. The state should require the preser­va­tion of bio­log­i­cal evi­dence for as long as the defen­dant remains incar­cer­at­ed and should require crime labs and law enforce­ment agen­cies to be cer­ti­fied by nation­al­ly rec­og­nized cer­ti­fi­ca­tion orga­ni­za­tions. It should also require audio or video­tap­ing of all inter­ro­ga­tions in poten­tial­ly cap­i­tal cas­es and imple­ment line­up pro­ce­dures that pro­tect against incor­rect eyewitness identifications.
  • Pennsylvania should ensure that all cap­i­tal defen­dants and death row inmates who are poor receive com­pe­tent lawyers. The assess­ment team found that the state fails to guar­an­tee the appoint­ment of two attor­neys at all stages of cap­i­tal cas­es, and that attor­neys often are pro­vid­ed insuf­fi­cient access to experts and inves­ti­ga­tors or to infor­ma­tion in dis­cov­ery. The pan­el also not­ed that the Pennsylvania lacks a statewide inde­pen­dent appoint­ing author­i­ty respon­si­ble for train­ing, select­ing, and mon­i­tor­ing cap­i­tal defense attorneys.
  • Pennsylvania should pro­vide state fund­ing for cap­i­tal indi­gent defense ser­vices. The group found that the state cur­rent­ly has no fund­ing for indi­gent defense ser­vices, but instead relies on coun­ty-fund­ed sys­tems. As a result, the qual­i­ty of Pennsylvania’s cap­i­tal indi­gent defense sys­tem varies wide­ly among coun­ties and fails to afford uni­form, qual­i­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion to many capital defendants.
  • Pennsylvania should elim­i­nate racial and geo­graph­ic bias from its death penal­ty sys­tem. The assess­ment team found that Pennsylvania is ​“sec­ond only to Louisiana in the per­cent­age of African Americans on death row” and that African American defen­dants in Philadelphia County were sen­tenced at a ​“sig­nif­i­cant high­er rate” than sim­i­lar­ly sit­u­at­ed non-African American defen­dants. The review con­clud­ed that one-third of African American death row inmates in Philadelphia County would have received sen­tences of life impris­on­ment if they had not been African American.
  • Pennsylvania should col­lect and make avail­able data on death-eli­gi­ble cas­es. Without a statewide enti­ty that col­lects data on all death-eli­gi­ble cas­es in the state, Pennsylvania can­not ensure that its sys­tem ensures pro­por­tion­al­i­ty in charg­ing or sen­tenc­ing, or deter­mine the extent of racial or geo­graph­ic bias in its capital system.
  • Pennsylvania should ensure that all death-row inmates receive mean­ing­ful review in state post-con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings. State law impos­es sev­er­al restric­tions on state post-con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings that seri­ous­ly impede the ade­quate devel­op­ment and judi­cial con­sid­er­a­tion of a death row inmate’s claims, includ­ing a 60-day time lim­i­ta­tion for fil­ing a suc­ces­sive post-conviction petition.
  • Pennsylvania should ensure that cap­i­tal jurors under­stand their roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties. The group revealed that the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of Pennsylvania cap­i­tal jurors fail to under­stand their roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties when decid­ing whether to impose a death sen­tence. More than 98% of these jurors failed to under­stand ​“at least some” por­tion of the jury instruc­tions, and of those ques­tioned, about 82% did not believe ​“that a life sen­tence real­ly meant life in prison.” The ABA urged the state to redraft its cap­i­tal jury instruc­tions with the objec­tive of pre­vent­ing com­mon juror mis­con­cep­tions and to pro­vide a clear­er under­stand­ing of the def­i­n­i­tion of life in prison without parole.

Pennsylvania has 228 peo­ple on death row and has car­ried out three exe­cu­tions since it rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty in 1978. Five peo­ple have been freed from death row on the basis of inno­cence.

The ABA is the nation’s largest lawyers’ asso­ci­a­tion. It has released sim­i­lar reviews in sev­en oth­er states. Though the orga­ni­za­tion does not take an offi­cial posi­tion on the death penal­ty, in 1997 it called for a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions until ​“fair­ness and accu­ra­cy — due process — are assured in death penal­ty cas­es.”
(Philadelphia Inquirer, October 10, 2007, and the American Bar Association Pennsylvania Death Penalty Assessment Report, October 2007). Read more infor­ma­tion about the report. See also Innocence, Representation, Race, Arbitrariness, and Studies.

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