Two men charged with killing Philadelphia Police Sgt. Robert Wilson III have been sen­tenced to life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole, plus an addi­tion­al term of 50 to 100 years, as pros­e­cu­tors in one of the nation’s largest death-penal­ty coun­ties agreed not to seek the death penal­ty in exchange for the defen­dants’ guilty pleas. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (pic­tured) appeared in court on June 25 to per­son­al­ly explain the ratio­nale behind the plea deal that ensures broth­ers Carlton Hipps and Ramone Williams will spend the rest of their lives in jail. Krasner told the court that the moth­ers of Sgt. Wilson’s two young chil­dren ​“do not want the death penal­ty” and that the plea deal would ​“min­i­mize the re-trauma­ti­za­tion” that would occur if they were exposed to a cap­i­tal tri­al and lengthy appeals. Krasner said “[t]he death penal­ty in Pennsylvania is not what peo­ple think it is. The real­i­ty is peo­ple are not exe­cut­ed in Pennsylvania. They die in cus­tody on death row.” The plea deal drew high­ly pub­li­cized crit­i­cism from the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police and oth­er mem­bers of Wilson’s fam­i­ly who want­ed the death penal­ty to be pur­sued. It also pro­voked oppo­si­tion from activists who said that Krasner’s use of the death penal­ty as lever­age for the guilty pleas vio­lat­ed his cam­paign promise nev­er to seek death sen­tences. The Philadelphia lodge of the FOP — who, along with for­mer pros­e­cu­tors who were fired from or left the DA’s office, have engaged in a pro­longed pub­lic rela­tions war against Krasner’s pro­pos­als for crim­i­nal-jus­tice reform — called the plea deal ​“despi­ca­ble.” On social media, it urged its mem­bers to attend the sen­tenc­ing to ​“show sup­port” for the Wilson fam­i­ly. Krasner said that the moth­ers of Wilson’s chil­dren had received threat­en­ing mes­sages, which they believed were from the FOP, pres­sur­ing them to ask Krasner to seek the death penal­ty. Only fam­i­ly mem­bers who opposed the deal came to the court hear­ing. Krasner’s deci­sion not to seek the death penal­ty comes in the wake of a twen­ty-year decline in Philadelphia’s use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The city imposed 99 death sen­tences in the 1990s, 21 in the first decade this cen­tu­ry, and few­er than one every oth­er year in the 2010s. Nearly 150 death sen­tences imposed in the city since the 1970s have been over­turned, and there has been only a sin­gle exe­cu­tion. After high­light­ing the high cost of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, Krasner said, ​“A choice to waste mon­ey may be a choice to endan­ger police offi­cers. And frankly, if you real­ly want to get down to it, when did the death penal­ty pre­vent this out­come? The death penal­ty has not stopped it here. The death penal­ty has not stopped it in the past. And, every bit of sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence indi­cates that it’s not going to stop it in the future.” A Death Penalty Information Center analy­sis of FBI mur­der data has shown that over the last three decades, police offi­cers have been killed at a rate that is 1.37 times high­er in states that cur­rent­ly have the death penal­ty than in states that have long abolished it.

(Max Mitchell, Krasner Personally Appears to Explain Choice to Eschew Death Penalty in Killing of Phila. Police Sgt., The Legal Intelligencer, June 25, 2018; Michael Tenenbaum, Krasner defends deci­sion not to pur­sue death penal­ty in mur­der of Philly cop, Philly Voice, June 25, 2018; Abraham Gutman, ​‘Never’ death penal­ty is what got Larry Krasner elect­ed. Now, that cam­paign promise is bro­ken, June 25, 2018; Chris Palmer, Slain cop’s fam­i­ly says DA’s Office is offer­ing his accused killers a plea deal, Philadelphia Inquirer, June 23, 2018.) See Sentencing and Deterrence.

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