Public Interest

Death Penalty Receives Another Blow, This Time In Pennsylvania

An unconventional tactic has put a stop to the death penalty in Pennsylvania... for now.

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syringe lethal injection death penalty Above the Law legal tabloidThe death penalty has come under fire recently in state courts. Now a recent case out of Pennsylvania highlights a possible role for state executives in hastening the death penalty’s demise.

Remember how last summer the Connecticut Supreme Court issued an opinion ending the death penalty in Connecticut? The court held that the death penalty violates the Connecticut constitution’s cruel and unusual punishment provision — the state analog of the Eighth Amendment — because the practice of killing convicts “fails to comport with contemporary standards of decency” and “is devoid of any legitimate penological justifications.” Back when the court handed down its opinion, I wondered whether the case might be a sign that the end of the death penalty is near, given the opinion’s careful (and arguably persuasive) application of Eighth Amendment case law from the Supreme Court to inform its reading of the Connecticut constitution.

At the same time, a very different case with similar results was winding its way through the Pennsylvania courts.

Though the cases are very different, there are of course some similarities; let’s look at them first. The Connecticut case stemmed from Eduardo Santiago’s shooting a sleeping victim in the head in exchange for a snowmobile from a third party. The Pennsylvania case stemmed from Terrance Williams’s robbing a victim and beating him to death with a tire iron. Both men were sentenced to death for their crimes. Nobody’s arguing that these are good people.

The big difference: Santiago applied to the courts for relief from the death penalty and got it. Williams applied to the courts for relief from the death penalty and didn’t get it. But, of course, that’s not the end of the story. Using the words of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, here’s what happened instead:

On January 13, 2015, Governor Tom Corbett signed a death warrant scheduling Williams’ execution for March 4, 2015. Shortly after the death warrant was signed, Governor Tom Wolf assumed office and, on February 13, 2015, issued a reprieve of Williams’ death sentence.

Along with the reprieve, Governor Wolf issued a memorandum — and it was a doozy. He wrote that Pennsylvania’s “capital sentencing system… is riddled with flaws, making it error prone, expensive, and anything but infallible.” He noted “numerous recent studies” that “called into question the accuracy, and fundamental fairness of Pennsylvania’s capital sentencing system.” He highlighted racial bias in the system, citing a study of Philadelphia capital cases where, “even after controlling for the seriousness of offenses and other non-racial factors, African American defendants were sentenced to death at a significantly higher rate than similarly situated members of other racial groups.” And he characterized one of the study’s main takeaways: “Researchers determined that one third of the African Americans on death row from Philadelphia would not have received the death penalty were they not African American.”  

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Wow. That’s bad.

As a result of these and other systemic flaws, Governor Wolf indicated in his memorandum that he planned to grant reprieves from all planned executions until Pennsylvania brought its capital system in line with the recommendations of a “forthcoming report of the Pennsylvania Task Force and Advisory Committee on Capital Punishment.” When and whether that will happen was — and still is — unclear.

Naturally, prosecutors swiftly applied to Pennsylvania’s court system for help. They argued that Governor Wolf had far exceeded his limited reprieve authority under the Pennsylvania constitution by effectively granting a blanket reprieve with no firm end date and no regard for the circumstances of the individuals on death row. The governor responded that his reprieve authority was broad and contained no restriction on either the time or purpose of reprieves. (The defendant, Williams, presented some arguments, too, but they’re pretty much in line with Governor Wolf’s.)

In an opinion issued just before Christmas, the court gave Governor Wolf a total win. Early in the opinion’s analysis section, it notes that the constitutional text that actually establishes the governor’s reprieve power “is unaccompanied by direct textual limitation other than an exception for impeachment cases.” So it’s not a great surprise to find the following a little further down:

We hold that the term “reprieve” as set forth in Article IV, Section 9(a) means the temporary suspension of the execution of a sentence. We find no limitation on the executive reprieve power relating to the duration of the reprieve, so long as it is temporary in nature and operates only for an interval of time. Additionally, we find no support for the proposition that the Governor must provide a particular explanation for his reprieve for it to be constitutionally sound.

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Of course the court includes a statement indicating that its opinion reflects legal, not policy analysis: “we emphasize that it is not our task to address the wisdom of Governor Wolf’s issuance of Williams’ reprieve, but only its constitutional validity.” And that’s all well and good. But the opinion is noteworthy inasmuch as it highlights a route progressive governors can take to hasten the end of the death penalty in their states.

And the more steps we take along the lines of Governor Wolf’s, the farther the death penalty will be from “contemporary standards of decency” — and the more cruel and unusual it’ll be.

Sam Wright is a dyed-in-the-wool, bleeding-heart public interest lawyer who has spent his career exclusively in nonprofits and government. If you have ideas, questions, kudos, or complaints about his column or public interest law in general, send him an email at PublicInterestATL@gmail.com.

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