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Freed Death Row Inmates and Former Prosecutor Join Call for Halt to Pennsylvania Executions

By Death Penalty Information Center

Posted on Apr 18, 2007 | Updated on Sep 25, 2024


(Pictured left to right, Harold Wilson, Barry Scheck, and Sam Millsap)

During a press con­fer­ence near the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, 16 for­mer death row inmates whose con­vic­tions were over­turned joined not­ed attor­ney Barry Scheck (pic­tured) and for­mer Texas pros­e­cu­tor Sam Millsap (pic­tured) in call­ing for a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in Pennsylvania. Harold C. Wilson (pic­tured), the most recent of six death row exonerees in the state, not­ed that he spent 16 years on death row for a mur­der he did not com­mit. If it had been up to the State of Pennsylvania, I would be dead today,” Wilson told those who gath­ered to launch the Pennsylvania Moratorium Coalition, a group devot­ed to halt­ing exe­cu­tions in the state while a review of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment laws is con­duct­ed. Wilson and fif­teen oth­er for­mer death row inmates from around the coun­try are part of Witness to Innocence, a group estab­lished by Sister Helen Prejean to assist wrong­ly con­vict­ed indi­vid­u­als who have been released from death row. They all signed a Declaration of Innocence” as they urged law­mak­ers to halt exe­cu­tions.

Scheck, who heads the Innocence Project in New York City, stat­ed that Pennsylvania has exe­cut­ed three men and freed six wrong­ly con­vict­ed men from death row since it rein­stat­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. If the death penal­ty does­n’t deter, if the death penal­ty is more expen­sive, and you have the risk of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent, is it a good pol­i­cy? No,” Scheck stat­ed. Millsap, a for­mer Bexar County, Texas, pros­e­cu­tor who now believes he may have sent an inno­cent man to his death, said that his expe­ri­ence proves that even with a per­fect tri­al,” the state can error. Ruban Cantu received a per­fect tri­al. The sys­tem in the Ruben Cantu case worked exact­ly the way it was sup­posed to work.… And one of the things we have to acknowl­edge is, he may well have been inno­cent,” Millsap observed.

In 2003, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rec­om­mend­ed a halt to exe­cu­tions in the state, in part because race plays a major, if not over­whelm­ing,” role in decid­ing whether to impose the death penal­ty. Since then, an advi­so­ry com­mit­tee has been estab­lished to study cas­es in which con­vic­tions have been over­turned by DNA evi­dence or oth­er issues.

Pennsylvania’s last exe­cu­tion took place in 1999. There are 225 peo­ple on death row in the state.
(Philadelphia Inquirer, April 14, 2007). See Innocence.
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