EDITORIALS: ​“Dollars and Death”

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Philadelphia Inquirer cit­ed the high costs of Pennsylvania​’s death penal­ty as a key rea­son for sup­port­ing an abo­li­tion bill that was pro­posed last month by a state sen­a­tor. According to the edi­to­r­i­al, the state could sig­nif­i­cant­ly cut spend­ing by elim­i­nat­ing the death penal­ty and the lengthy court pro­ceed­ings that accom­pa­ny it. Taxpayers would also save by not hav­ing to main­tain the state’s high-secu­ri­ty death row, which cur­rent­ly hous­es 220 inmates. According to the edi­to­r­i­al, ​“Pennsylvania has reached the point where the right moral course — end­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment — coin­cides more than ever with the need to get the state’s fis­cal house in order. The state has not had an exe­cu­tion since 1999 and has had six exon­er­a­tions since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976. The paper sug­gest­ed that ​“A use­ful step toward scrap­ping the flawed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem would be to impose a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions.” Read full edi­to­r­i­al below.

Editorial: Dollars and death

Facing a mas­sive and cost­ly prison over­crowd­ing prob­lem, Pennsylvania has reached the point where the right moral course — end­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment — coin­cides more than ever with the need to get the state’s fis­cal house in order.

Space is so tight in the pris­ons that 2,000 inmates are being shipped to oth­er states. Meanwhile, the state Corrections Department is seek­ing an 8.5 per­cent boost in its new bud­get — dri­ving the annu­al cost to ware­house con­victs to $1.9 bil­lion. That equals 7 per­cent of all state spending.

So the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty pro­posed this month by state Sen. Daylin Leach (D., Montgomery) rep­re­sents an effort, in part, to help reduce prison costs.

Leach says the state could save hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars by elim­i­nat­ing the death penal­ty. The sav­ings would come by end­ing the lengthy and cost­ly death-penal­ty appeals that clog the system.

The state would also save the extra cost of main­tain­ing a death row whose pop­u­la­tion now stands at 220. That would free up high-secu­ri­ty space for other convicts.

The dol­lars-and-cents argu­ment against the death penal­ty is sec­ondary, of course, to the risk of sen­tenc­ing an inno­cent per­son to die, as has hap­pened in six cas­es in Pennsylvania and 139 nation­wide. Fortunately, those inmates were exon­er­at­ed by new evi­dence but the risk remains of exe­cut­ing an innocent person.

It’s also well-doc­u­ment­ed that poor and minor­i­ty mur­der defen­dants are more like­ly to face the death penal­ty. That’s due to the unequal access to an effec­tive legal defense, as well as sus­pect­ed racial bias in the courts.

A use­ful step toward scrap­ping the flawed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem would be to impose a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, as pro­posed under oth­er leg­is­la­tion stalled in the General Assembly.

Despite the known fail­ings of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and dwin­dling pub­lic sup­port, influ­en­tial state Senate Republicans like judi­cia­ry com­mit­tee chair Stewart Greenleaf (R., Bucks) believe the state isn’t ready to out­law exe­cu­tions. But the same might have been said a few years ago of New York and New Mexico, states that fol­lowed New Jersey’s 2007 lead to ban executions.

New Jersey had­n’t exe­cut­ed any­one in decades, so the death penal­ty in that state served no plau­si­ble deter­rent to murder.

The same could be said of Pennsylvania’s death row, where only so-called vol­un­teers who halt­ed their appeals have been exe­cut­ed in recent times. The most recent occurred more than 10 years ago with the death of tor­ture-killer Gary R. Heidnik.

A ban on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment appar­ent­ly would have to await Gov. Rendell’s depar­ture from office, since the for­mer dis­trict attor­ney vows to veto any plan. Nor is there any assur­ance of sup­port from any of the con­tenders to replace Rendell.

But the state’s pris­ons cri­sis is not going away any time soon, just as more death-row inmates are sure to be exon­er­at­ed over time.

That should make the cost­ly and flawed sys­tem of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment repug­nant to more and more Americans.

Eventually, elect­ed offi­cials in Harrisburg will have to lead on this issue — or at least get out of the way.

(Editorial, ​“Dollars and death,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 30, 2010). See also Costs, Editorials, and Recent Legislative Activity.