Pennsylvania majority opposes death penalty

New York opposition more pronounced

By FRITZ MAYER

PENNSYLVANIA — According to a poll conducted in January, a majority of Pennsylvania residents prefer life sentences without possibility of parole as opposed to the death sentence for people convicted of capital crimes.

The poll, commissioned by the Pennsylvania Civil Liberties Union, found that 42.9 percent of respondents supported the death penalty when presented with alternative sentences; 45.1 percent supported either life without parole or life with parole.

The statewide poll came as criminal justice systems across the country are less likely to impose the ultimate penalty on convicts. According to the Death Penalty Information Center in 1999, 98 people were put to death; in 2006, the number of executed prisoners was 53, representing a 10-year low.

Death penalty opponents say the seemingly growing reluctance to implement the death penalty is due to growing doubt that it is applied fairly, and that innocent people are sometimes sent to death row. Opponents claim that since 1972, 123 people sentenced to death row nationwide have been exonerated¾six of those cases have been in Pennsylvania.

Death penalty proponents argue, however, that many of these cases were dismissed because of legal technicalities, and that the actual risk of an innocent person being sent to death row is extremely low.

In 1972, the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court ruled that the state’s death penalty was unconstitutional. In 1978, the state legislature drafted a new death penalty law, which went into effect over the veto of then Governor Milton Shapp.

The Pennsylvania ACLU has called for “a temporary suspension of executions, along with a comprehensive analysis of how the death penalty is operating in Pennsylvania.”

Views of New Yorkers

The opinion of New Yorkers is more anti-death penalty than in Pennsylvania. According to a CBS-New York Times poll conducted in September 2006, 50 percent of respondents said people facing sentencing for a capital crime should instead receive life in prison without the chance of parole, while 29 percent said the convicted person should receive the death penalty.

According to the organization New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty, the results are consistent with other polls taken recently, and support for the death penalty in New York has dropped approximately 20 percent since the early 1990s.

State lawmakers reinstated the death penalty in 1995. The New York Supreme Court declared the state’s death penalty statute unconstitutional in 2004.

No executions have occurred since before 1976 when rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court allowed executions to resume in states after a four-year national hiatus.

Pennsylvania and New York facts

In 1972, the U.S Supreme Court issued a ruling with nine separate opinions that effectively voided the existing death penalty statutes in 40 states. The majority of the decisions held that the death penalty itself was not unconstitutional, but the way it was applied could be unconstitutional.

In 1976, the court ruled that re-written death penalty laws were constitutional in four states.

Since then, 38 states have re-written and reinstated death penalty statutes, while 11 states and the District of Columbia have no death penalty.

Here are some specifics of death penalty practices in New York and Pennsylvania:

New York:

Number of executions since 1976 —0

Number of executions before 1976 —1130

Current death row population —1

Women on death row —0

Date death penalty reinstated — September 01, 1995

First execution after reinstatement —not applicable

Murder rate (per 100,000 residents) — 4.5

Number of innocent persons freed from death row — 0

Method —lethal injection

Pennsylvania:

Number of executions since 1976 —3

Number of executions before 1976 —1040

Current death row population — 228

Women on death row — 5

Date death penalty reinstated —March 26, 1974

First execution after reinstatement —1995

Murder rate (per 100,000 residents) — 6.1

Number of Innocent Persons Freed From Death Row — 6

Method — lethal injection