Nineteen years after hav­ing been sen­tenced to death in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, and five years after win­ning a new tri­al, Ronald Champney entered a no-con­test plea to less­er charges in a plea deal that could soon set him free. Under the plea deal, which the court accept­ed on August 10, 2018, Champney agreed — with­out admit­ting guilt — that pros­e­cu­tors had suf­fi­cient evi­dence for a jury to con­vict him of third-degree mur­der and pos­sess­ing instru­ments of crime, and pros­e­cu­tors with­drew charges of first-degree mur­der, bur­glary, aggra­vat­ed assault, and oth­er relat­ed offens­es. The court resen­tenced Champney to a term of 10 to 20 years impris­on­ment, much of which he has already served. With death-penal­ty rever­sals and non-cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ings far out­strip­ping new death sen­tences, Pennsylvania’s death row has fall­en by 100 in the last 16 years — from 247 in April 2002 to 147 on August 1, 2018—with­out any exe­cu­tions. 170 Pennsylvania death-row pris­on­ers have over­turned their con­vic­tions or death sen­tences in state or fed­er­al post-con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings and Pennsylvania’s state courts have reversed an addi­tion­al 100 death sen­tences on direct appeal. Champney’s case is one of 139 of the cas­es reversed in post-con­vic­tion to have com­plet­ed retri­al or resen­tenc­ing, and he is one of the 135 defen­dants (97.1%) to be resen­tenced to life or less or acquit­ted. Of the pris­on­ers who were resen­tenced to death, only three are still on death row, and anoth­er died before his post-con­vic­tion chal­lenges to that sen­tence were adju­di­cat­ed. Champney was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1999 for a mur­der that occurred in 1992. In June 2008, the tri­al court over­turned his death sen­tence because his lawyer failed to object to the pros­e­cu­tion’s pre­sen­ta­tion of vic­tim-impact tes­ti­mo­ny that was not admis­si­ble under Pennsylvania law. The court also grant­ed Champney a new tri­al, find­ing that his lawyer had been inef­fec­tive for fail­ing to move to sup­press state­ments police had improp­er­ly obtained from Champney while inter­ro­gat­ing him with­out his lawyer being present. An equal­ly divid­ed Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the tri­al court’s rul­ing in April 2013, set­ting the stage for the plea agree­ment. On June 25, the Pennsylvania state sen­ate’s Task Force and Advisory Committee on Capital Punishment issued a report describ­ing the Commonwealth’s death-penal­ty sys­tem as seri­ous­ly flawed and in need of major reform, in part because of high rates of con­sti­tu­tion­al error and sub­stan­dard defense rep­re­sen­ta­tion at trial.

(Peter E. Bortner, Champney leaves death row, pleads no con­test to mur­der, Republican Herard, August 10, 2018.) See Pennsylvania and Sentencing.

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