The Patriot-News in Pennsylvania is run­ning a series of arti­cles exam­in­ing the state’s death penal­ty in antic­i­pa­tion of a com­pre­hen­sive report on the death penal­ty com­mis­sioned by the state leg­is­la­ture. Pennsylvania has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 1999, and all three of its exe­cu­tions in the mod­ern era were inmates who waived their appeals. Incoming Governor Tom Wolf has said he may hold off on allow­ing exe­cu­tions until the state address­es ques­tions of fair­ness in the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty. Incoming state Supreme Court Justice Thomas Saylor recent­ly raised con­cerns about defense fund­ing, say­ing, ​“If we want the death penal­ty, the state must pro­vide resources to pro­vide com­pe­tent defense coun­sel for indi­gent defen­dants. That’s the dis­con­nect we have right now.” State Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, who spon­sored the res­o­lu­tion call­ing for a study of the death penal­ty, called the study ​“his­toric,” say­ing, ​“We should­n’t run away from facts regard­less of what our opin­ions are.” Sen. Daylin Leach intends to re-intro­duce a bill to repeal the death penal­ty this year.

The Patriot-News’ series includes com­men­tary from peo­ple with a vari­ety of expe­ri­ences relat­ed to the death penal­ty, infor­ma­tion on the state’s death row and past exe­cu­tions, and report­ing on life on death row. Links to all the arti­cles can be found here.

(J. Murphy, ​“Death penal­ty: Is it right for Pa., or is it time to abol­ish it?,” Patriot-News, January 5, 2015). See Studies and Arbitrariness.

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