Pennsylvania should abolish the death penalty
With Inauguration Day looming, the U.S. Department of Justice seems hellbent on squeezing in as many executions as possible before the next president takes the oath of office.
The federal government hadn’t carried out an execution in 17 years and nowit is on a killing rampage, executing 10 people last year. The rush of executions is aberrant, as the Death Penalty Information Center reported historic lows regarding the death penalty in their 2020 year-end report.
Colorado abolished the death penalty, becoming one of the 34 states that has abolished it in law or in practice.
Public support for the punishment is at an almost 60-year low, and there were only 17 executions last year, even with the federal government’s haste to execute.
The coronavirus pandemic contributed to the lows, as trials and executions were delayed. Death row inmates contracted the virus and 16 prematurely lost their lives to it. Some states refused to schedule executions, citing the danger to the staff, family members, press and other witnesses.
Some states ignored those concerns and proceeded with executions that became “superspreader events.”
Several executions conducted in the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana prompted case numbers to rise from
11 to 206 after a prison employee, who had tested positive for the coronavirus, worked without a mask. That outbreak killed at least three people.
The report identified a disturbing pattern. There are mistakes being made in the use of the ultimate form of punishment. Before they could be executed, five death row inmates were exonerated last year. Pennsylvania isn’t exempt. Two menwere exonerated right here in the commonwealth.
Since 1976, that’s happened to 172 people across the country. These wrongful convictions were due to official misconduct, false accusation, junk science, eyewitness misidentification, ineffective representation, and prosecutorial misconduct, including the withholding of exculpatory evidence.
We, as Americans and Pennsylvanians, must ask ourselves if we are OK
with continuing to execute fellow citizens in a system riddled with error. I, for one, amnot.
Even more disturbing, the federal government has executed more people than the states for the first time in history. The federal government has sparingly employed the death penalty over the past 57 years, executing only three people.
Yet, under this administration, the federal government has been feverishly executing those on death row. They have made the record books by last year conducting 10 executions, which is more
than any presidency has carried out in the 20th or 21st century.
Three executions have occurred since the election, and three more are scheduled before the inauguration. There hasn’t been a lame-duck execution since the 19th century.
The number of executions conducted by the federal government is as abnormal as the people they chose to condemn. The federal government executed inmates whocommitted their crimes as teenagers for the first time in almost 70 years, as well as an inmate whocommitted a crime in a state that abolished the death penalty.
There have been scheduled executions of inmates whohave serious mental illnesses and intellectual disabilities, one of whommay not have been mentally competent at his execution.
There have been executions of two inmates whodid not kill anyone. One of those inmates was Brandon Bernard, whowas 18 at the time of the crime and did not pull the trigger. One of his five co-defendants killed the two victims. I question the reasoning behind the killing of someone whodidn’t kill. Aneye for an eye doesn’t seem to apply.
Though the use of the death penalty declined last year, there is still work to be done. The killing inflicted by the federal government has sparked public outcry.
Bernard’s execution produced a firestorm on Twitter, as people pleaded for his sentence to be commuted. His name trended third in the world as he spoke his last words, apologizing to the victim’s family. The public’s pleas were ignored as the execution proceeded.
Social media is powerful but outrage must be sustained. We cannot let this become another trend soon forgotten.
It’s time to end this uncivilized punishment. This is a call to action for tangible change that stems from our legislators.
Pennsylvania sticks out like a sore thumb in the Northeast as the only state that has yet to abolish the punishment in the region. Wehave a moratorium in place, but the stability of it is uncertain.
The death penalty doesn’t belong here. It has outlived its usefulness. Pennsylvanians, and their tax dollars, must not continue to contribute to the killing of our own.