Robert Cindrich, a for­mer U.S. District Judge and U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, recent­ly wrote an op-ed for the Harrisburg Patriot-News call­ing Governor Tom Wolf’s mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in Pennsylvania ​“appro­pri­ate” and ​“rea­son­able.” Expressing con­cerns about ​“mul­ti­ple, seri­ous prob­lems with the death penal­ty” in Pennsylvania, Judge Cindrich says Governor Wolf ​“was absolute­ly cor­rect” that no exe­cu­tions should take place until the Pennsylvania Advisory Committee and Task Force on Capital Punishment com­pletes its study of the state’s death penal­ty and makes rec­om­men­da­tions for reform. In par­tic­u­lar, Cindrich is ​“high­ly con­cerned about the fair­ness of [Pennsylvania’s] cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem.” He points to ​“the rever­sals of most death sen­tences, the poor com­pen­sa­tion of pub­lic defend­ers in cap­i­tal cas­es, and the racial bias in Pennsylvania’s impo­si­tion of death sen­tences” as areas all ​“in dire need of improve­ment.” More than half of the 400 death sen­tences imposed in Pennsylvania have been reversed ​“due to seri­ous flaws or mis­con­duct at tri­al,” he says, which indi­cates ​“that far too many indi­vid­u­als received unfair and unwar­rant­ed sen­tences of death.”

Judge Cindrich also crit­i­cizes the under­fund­ing of pub­lic defend­ers. ​“Pennsylvania’s cap­i­tal pub­lic defend­ers are among the low­est-paid in the nation…Our low pay scale can result in low-qual­i­ty lawyer­ing where only the high­est stan­dard fits the grav­i­ty of the pos­si­ble sen­tence at hand – the tak­ing of a human life by the state.” Finally, he high­lights the racial dis­par­i­ties in death sen­tences, quot­ing a Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee that found, ​“one-third of the African American death-row inmates in Philadelphia County would have received life impris­on­ment if they had not been African American.” He con­cludes, ​“If we are to have the penal­ty of death imposed on cit­i­zens by Pennsylvania, we should use every tool avail­able to make cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as fair as it can pos­si­bly be.” The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has sched­uled oral argu­ment on Thursday, September 10 on the Governor’s author­i­ty to use his reprieve pow­er to impose a mora­to­ri­um on executions.

(R. Cindrich, ​“Gov. Wolf made the right call on death penal­ty mora­to­ri­um: Robert Cindrich,” The Patriot-News, September 3, 2015.) See New Voices and Pennsylvania.

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