Updated 3:07 PM; Posted 11:10 AM
A recent report by the Joint State Government Commission on capital punishment in Pennsylvania recommends numerous policy changes. (pennlive.com file photo)
By Express-Times guest columnist
By David Rose
As an opponent of the death penalty, I was pleased to see the Sept. 30 opinion piece by George Will, “Abolish the death penalty.”
While Will was clear about some of the troubling issues that arise in trying to determine who deserves to die and the wasteful cost of keeping the machinery of death functioning, he was unclear as to what steps would need to be taken to have the United States abolish capital punishment.
The statement in the article’s headline “U.S. must realize that capital punishment is cruel and ineffective,” is aspirational, but too broad to be useful. It was a surprising oversight that a conservative commentator would ignore the fact that individual states create criminal penalties; Congress has no authority to prohibit states from using the death penalty. Each state must decide whether to continue this punishment.
The time is long overdue for Pennsylvania to seriously consider the issues that arise in keeping the death penalty alive. This past June the Joint State Government Commission released a report by the task force and advisory committee, “Capital Punishment in Pennsylvania.” This report follows the 2007 “ABA Pennsylvania Death Penalty Assessment Report” and the 2001 “Final Report of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Criminal Justice System.” Both recommended a moratorium on executions until problems with racial bias and adequate legal representation and safeguards were addressed.
Instead of legislative action on these recommendations during the past 17 years, we now have yet another report that addresses the same issues in addition to others, including the additional costs of death sentencing, the risk of an innocent person being executed, and the secondary trauma to families of both the victim and inmate created by the appeal process unique to capital punishment.
Read more at https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2018/10/_opinion_17.html.
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