Since 2000, 50 peo­ple have had their death sen­tences reversed in Pennsylvania as courts found seri­ous legal errors in the inmates’ orig­i­nal tri­als. The num­ber of rever­sals near­ly equaled the num­ber of peo­ple added to the state’s death row dur­ing the past 7 years and have come from a vari­ety of courts. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued about 20% of the rever­sals, 50% of the death sen­tences were over­turned by state tri­al judges dur­ing the next stage of review, and anoth­er 30% of the rever­sals came from fed­er­al courts.

Some pros­e­cu­tors believe that the rever­sals have made cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment into a law that is ​“only on the books” in Pennsylvania. However, Widener University law pro­fes­sor and death penal­ty defense attor­ney Jules Epstein not­ed, ​“There clear­ly is a death penal­ty in Pennsylvania. People get sen­tenced to death. People sit on death row. And the real rea­son peo­ple haven’t been exe­cut­ed yet is because of tremen­dous prob­lems with­in the sys­tem.” Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Benjamin Lerner added that many of the cas­es from that city have been reversed for good rea­son. He said that the court sys­tem ​“fre­quent­ly tram­pled all over the rights of defen­dants” and that many of those fac­ing the death penal­ty were rep­re­sent­ed by attor­neys who did not nec­es­sar­i­ly know death penal­ty law or were pros­e­cut­ed by overzeal­ous pros­e­cu­tors who were only con­cerned about getting convictions.

Executions have been rare in Pennsylvania, where 225 peo­ple are on death row. The state has car­ried out three exe­cu­tions since it rein­stat­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1978. In each of those cas­es, the pris­on­er waived his appeals and hence has­tened the exe­cu­tion. During this same peri­od, the state has freed 6 wrong­ly-con­vict­ed men from death row.
(Philadelphia Inquirer, July 1, 2007). See Costs, Representation, State-by-State Information and Innocence.

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