Lawmaker calls for end of death penalty in Pennsylvania

HARRISBURG - A Philadelphia-area lawmaker today called for the abolition of the state's death penalty, arguing that execution is ineffective and an economic drain, as well as a moral wrong.

"By any measure, the death penalty is a failed government program," said Sen. Daylin Leach (D., Montgomery) as he introduced the legislation at a news conference.

Bill supporters include anti-death penalty groups and a number of faith-based organizations, some victims' families, and exonerated death row inmates.

But it faces opposition in the General Assembly - particularly in the Republican-controlled Senate and in the chief executive's office, where Gov. Rendell, a former Philadelphia district attorney, has indicated he will veto it.

"It's worthy of some study," said Sen. Stewart Greenleaf (R., Bucks), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will consider the bill. "I don't think Pennsylvania is ready to repeal the death penalty now."

Leach said he thinks he has societal momentum and economics on his side.

"We are sending a number of innocent people to jail, so clearly the system is imperfect," said Leach. "You can release someone from jail. If you execute someone who's innocent, there's no going back."

Leach, who believes capital punishment - with its endless appeals - has cost Pennsylvania hundreds of millions of dollars, says he is taking his lead from New Jersey, which in 2007 became the first state to end executions since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. (Since then, New York and New Mexico also have abolished the death penalty).

In 2007 Gov. Corzine's multipronged arguments won support in the New Jersey Assembly: The death penalty is not a deterrent to murder, there is no humane way to put someone to death, and the system is too costly.

Appearing with Leach today was a Pennsylvania man sentenced to death who was later exonerated through DNA evidence, and a father who became a death penalty foe after befriending his son's killer.

"It's the roll of the dice," said Ray Krone of York County, who spent 10 years behind bars in Arizona for the murder of a bar manager before being cleared through DNA on a bite mark. "If they can do it to me they can do it to anyone."

"I'm convinced the death penalty does nothing positive for members of victims' families," said Wes Everett, a Lutheran minister from Lewisburg, whose son was killed in 1987. "I refuse to support a system that inflicts that much pain on family member of the victim or the offender."

A bill to enact a moratorium on executions is also awaiting action in the Senate. No one has been executed in Pennsylvania since Gary Heidnik, who was convicted in the torture deaths of two women held in his Philadelphia basement, died by lethal injection in 1999.

Ashlee Shelton, executive director of the Harrisburg-based Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said her group is urging the legislature to conduct a thorough study of racial and geographic bias and innocence in the death penalty system.

Leach points out that since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court Pennsylvania has executed only three people - all of whom gave up their appeals.

Pennsylvania has 220 individuals on death row, the fourth-highest number in the nation. Rendell has signed 103 death warrants since taking office in 2003.

Across the country, 139 death row inmates have been exonerated since 1976, six of them in Pennsylvania.