Amnesty International, Eastern PA

On October 9th, the American Bar Association (ABA) released a report showing that Pennsylvania’s death penalty system is inaccurate and unfairly applied. Your involvement can spread the word and help us to put a stop to the death penalty in Pennsylvania. On May 1st, 2007 AIUSA joined with over a dozen other statewide groups in calling for a moratorium on executions in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Moratorium Coalition was formed to encourage grassroots momentum and legislative action supporting a suspension of executions while questions of fairness and accuracy are thoroughly reviewed and fully addressed.

There are compelling concerns about unfairness and inaccuracy in Pennsylvania’s death penalty. The American Bar Association report gave Pennsylvanians one more reason in a growing body of evidence that the system is broken.

Innocent lives in the balance

• Since 1973, at least 123 death row inmates have been released after evidence proved their innocence.
• Six men have been wrongfully convicted and released from Pennsylvania’s death row, twice as many people as the state has executed.
• Pennsylvania does not guarantee that biological evidence will be saved for the full length of the defendant’s incarceration, making it even harder for those who have been wrongly convicted to prove their innocence.
• Studies show that poor eyewitness identification may be the leading factor in wrongful convictions, yet Pennsylvania does not require law enforcement to use lineup procedures that increase accuracy.

The right to a decent lawyer

• More than 90 percent of Pennsylvania’s death row prisoners were too poor to afford a lawyer for their initial trial.
• Many indigent defendants in Pennsylvania, including those with mental disabilities, are not allowed access to expert witnesses and investigators, both of which are often crucial in capital trials.
• Insufficient or inconsistent funding for public defenders in capital cases in Pennsylvania has the dual effect of deterring the most qualified and experienced attorneys from trying these cases and limiting the power of those who do take the cases from defending their clients to the best of their abilities.

Racially skewed

• Pennsylvania has largest percentage of minorities on death row than any other state at 70%, even though less than 14% of the population of the state are people of color.
• Independent researchers found that, even after controlling for case differences, blacks in Philadelphia are 3.9 times more likely to get the death penalty than other defendants who committed similar murders.
• Pennsylvania law meets zero of the ten recommendations made by the American Bar Association to reduce the impact of race in the administration of the death penalty.

A lottery of geography

• Where a crime happens can be as important as what type of crime is committed in determining who lives and who dies. Of those sentenced to death in Pennsylvania, more than half come from Philadelphia County, which accounts for only 14 percent of the state’s population.
• Although Philadelphia’s murder rate is only about 3 times greater than that of Harrisburg, the proportion of those condemned to death is 11 times greater in Philadelphia.

Pennsylvanians want a justice system that is fair

• A recent poll found that 62% of Pennsylvanians favor suspending the death penalty until questions of fairness can be studied.
• More than two thirds of Pennsylvanians agree that the death penalty is unevenly applied to the poor, and more than half agree that it is unevenly applied to African Americans.
• Almost 200 organizations throughout Pennsylvania have called for a moratorium on executions, including professional associations, small businesses, churches, and city councils.

If you can do one thing:

Contact Your State Senator. To find your State Senator’s contact information enter your zip code at www.vote-smart.org
Tell him/her: “Pennsylvania’s death penalty is inaccurate and unfair. A new report by the ABA’s Assessment Team shows that the problems we suspected are really there. Please support Senate Bill 850, a moratorium on executions, while these problems are fully addressed.”

• Sample letter to legislators – PA Moratorium (Word format)

If you can do two things:

Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper in response to their article (or lack thereof) about the Assessment Team’s report, saying that Pennsylvania needs to halt executions while the broken death penalty is examined and the problems revealed in the report are thoroughly reviewed and addressed. For ideas and assistance in writing a letter to the editor, contact Jen Horwitz, jhorwitz@aiusa.org

If you can do three things:

Alert others. Ask your group to pass a resolution calling for a moratorium on executions. Passing a resolution is easier than you think! Over 4,600 groups around the country have done it, including almost 200 in Pennsylvania. For a sample resolution, please contact the Pennsylvania Moratorium Coalition pamoratorium@gmail.com or by visit the Coalition’s website at www.pamoratorium.org.

For more information on the death penalty in Pennsylvania, please contact Maria Weick, the State Death Penalty Abolition Coordinator at bomabesa@earthlink.net or Jen Horwitz at jhorwitz@aiusa.org.