The Sentinel news­pa­per of Pennsylvania is the lat­est paper to edi­to­ri­al­ly con­clude that the death penal­ty should be abol­ished. Shortly after it pub­lished an inves­tiga­tive piece out­lin­ing the inef­fec­tive­ness of Pennsylvania’s death penal­ty, the news­pa­per edi­to­ri­al­ized that the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment laws are ​“use­less” and that the ​“pen­du­lum is swing­ing away from Pennsylvania’s posi­tion on a law it can­not even exe­cute.” The Central Pennsylvania-based news­pa­per not­ed that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has failed to deter crime, has lost favor with the pub­lic, risks inno­cent lives, and pro­longs the suf­fer­ing of vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers who must endure years of legal appeals. The paper wrote:

The death penal­ty is use­less.

Even those who believe in the death penal­ty should come to that con­clu­sion after read­ing The Sentinel’s pack­age of sto­ries Sunday. Those sto­ries showed that after the con­sid­er­able expense of sen­tenc­ing peo­ple to die, those defen­dants spend anoth­er dozen years or so fight­ing with appeals, again to the public’s great expense.

In Pennsylvania, a felon has to vol­un­teer to die for the death penal­ty to work.

This has led to 221 res­i­dents on Pennsylvania’s death row, the fourth-largest num­ber in the nation. The one sure way — and an option rarely cho­sen — to get off death row is to jump on the gur­ney and stick out your arm for the injec­tion. Another is to be released, which is more like­ly, con­sid­er­ing the six inmates whose sen­tences have been over­turned since 1982.

Death penal­ty sup­port­ers point to the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies as they argue for the pun­ish­ment. But what about the fam­i­lies? What about the lengthy tri­al that com­pounds the anguish of their loved one’s awful death? What about the years of await­ing appeal court deci­sions? And per­haps most impor­tant, what about their feel­ings on the occa­sions the defen­dant was wrongfully convicted? 

What is right for the fam­i­lies is depend­able, quick jus­tice.

The reflex is to peel off the lay­ers of appeals avail­able to defen­dants. But con­sid­er­ing the num­ber of defen­dants exon­er­at­ed by DNA evi­dence and oth­er means, we would con­sid­er that unwise. And as state Rep. Willl Gabig told The Sentinel sto­ry, ​“We haven’t heard that the statute is pre­vent­ing peo­ple from being exe­cut­ed.”

So we are left with a gru­el­ing process that in the end only guar­an­tees more suf­fer­ing for vic­tims’ fam­i­lies and soci­ety at large as faith in the jus­tice sys­tem erodes. Beyond the emo­tion­al rea­son­ing for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, many argue the death penal­ty as a deter­rent is too impor­tant to let go. As com­pelling an argu­ment that might be, a look at the record pace of homi­cides in Pennsylvania’s cities casts a shad­ow of doubt on that the­o­ry.

And doubt is what is devel­op­ing about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in gen­er­al. One of The Sentinel’s sto­ries Sunday point­ed to a Gallup poll last year that found for the first time in decades a major­i­ty of Americans pre­fer prison with­out parole over the death penal­ty in cas­es of murder. 

Whether this opin­ion results from frus­tra­tion with the sys­tem or revul­sion at the pun­ish­ment, we don’t know. We do know the pen­du­lum is swing­ing away from Pennsylvania’s posi­tion on a law it can­not even execute.

(The Sentinel, April 3, 2007). See Editorials, Innocence, Deterrence, Victims, and Public Opinion.

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