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Also this issue: The Big Stink Paper Rail The Bell Curve Who's on Second? The Green Mile |
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July 18-24, 2002
city beat
 shirting the issue: Death penalty opponent Jeff Garis has found an ally in a Republican state senator. Photo By: Michael T. Regan |
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Jeff Garis hates the death penalty. The former Mennonite minister has always been against capital punishment, and as executive director of the nonprofit group Pennsylvania Abolitionists United Against the Death Penalty, Garis is one of the state’s leading anti-death penalty advocates. He and his small staff labor endlessly to abolish what they consider an immoral punishment and to rally to their cause anyone who will listen. Lately, one of Garis’ biggest allies in his fight has come from an unlikely source.
State Sen. Edward Helfrick, a six-term conservative Republican from Northumberland County, is chairman of the Senate's fish and game committee. No surprise there, since the senator represents Pennsylvania's gun country. What is surprising is that of the 15 bills Helfrick has authored and introduced in the Senate this session, no fewer than six of the bills call for the suspension, moratorium or repeal of the state's death penalty statutes, including Senate Bill No. 26, which calls for the state to commute the death sentences of 26 current Pennsylvania death row inmates identified as mentally retarded.
When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that executing the mentally retarded was unconstitutional, it seemed to ratify the spirit and tone of Helfrick's bill. There wasn't a huge cry of dissent, even from the staunchest death penalty advocates. No one wants to lobby for the execution of the mentally retarded, so why are the governor and district attorneys association dead set against seeing SB 26 become law?
Dave La Torre, Gov. Mark Schweiker's deputy press secretary, says Schweiker does not want to overrule jurors.
"Essentially, the governor does not feel comfortable going against the decision of the 12 jurors who have decided that these defendants are worthy of the death penalty," La Torre says. "Those jurors sat through the testimony in these cases, weighed the evidence and returned what they considered a fair verdict. The governor believes in the appeals process, and right now that process calls for a unanimous recommendation from the Board of Pardons before the governor can commute any death sentence to life in prison. No such unanimous recommendation has come down the pike yet."
The Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association (PDAA), a policy and lobbying group made up of the state's prosecutors, stands in opposition to SB 26; their official line is that current law adequately deals with the problem in a fair manner.
Tioga County District Attorney John Cowley is president of the PDAA, and he says the association has the backing of the majority of Pennsylvanians.
"The death penalty is a substantial issue in the state and certainly is hotly debated, but the death penalty has the support of the majority," says Cowley. "Reasonable people can disagree on the issue, but our focus is on the issue of justice. Obviously, we're willing to discuss the Senate bill, but as always, the devil is in the details. The bill offers little guidance on who would determine criteria, or how."
Ron Eisenberg, deputy district attorney and chief of the law division of the Philadelphia district attorney's office, says both SB 26 and the Supreme Court ruling are misleading. People who hear about the bill are horrified at the notion that the state could even consider executing the mentally retarded, Eisenberg says, and with good reason. But the perception, he claims, is far from the reality.
"The bill conjures up images of someone with obvious limited mental capacity sitting on death row waiting to die," Eisenberg says. "That idea is as repugnant to prosecutors as anyone else, but that's just not happening. No prosecutor would knowingly try a person he or she believed was incompetent to stand trial. The law clearly says a person has to be able to understand the nature of the charges against them and be able to assist in their own defense. A person who is clearly unable to understand the charges would be declared incompetent and couldn't even be tried for shoplifting, let alone a capital offense."
Last March, the PDAA, in the person of Cumberland County District Attorney M.L. "Skip" Ebert Jr., testified before the Senate judiciary committee on SB 26. Ebert testified that "there are 245 inmates on death row in Pennsylvania. Of these, the Department of Corrections is able to identify 26 inmates who might have a mental retardation claim. ... Clearly, we are talking about very few killers who would qualify for the mental retardation exception."
Twenty-six out of 245 is more than 10 percent, and rather than characterize that number as "very few," Garis finds the number appalling.
"It's scandalous that the governor is willing to ignore the Supreme Court and would even consider allowing the state to execute mentally retarded death row inmates," Garis says angrily. Normally soft-spoken, Garis gets animated when asked about the possibility of strapping down a mentally retarded person to the lethal injection gurney.
"It is not just unconstitutional, as the Supreme Court has correctly stated, it's unconscionable. Even the law enforcement people and prosecutors understand that there are standards of decency involved here. Nothing can be gained by executing someone with limited mental function. Where is the justice in that?" says Garis.
Todd Roup, spokesman for Garis' new ally, Sen. Helfrick, says that the senator, a lifetime NRA member, might be playing against stereotype, but his position on the death penalty has been well-known to his constituents for years.
"Senator Helfrick sees the inherent unfairness of the death penalty in general, but this issue is really a no-brainer," Roup says. "There are documented cases where both the defense and the prosecution have agreed to the defendant's mental retardation, but they were given the death penalty anyway. This cannot be allowed in a civilized society, and the senator will continue to be out front on this issue."
Roup says that SB 26 has a core group of support in the Senate and that he expects some honest debate when the bill comes up in the fall, but fully expects SB 26 to pass.
For its part, the state Department of Corrections is backing away from the number of 26 inmates quoted by the District Attorneys Association, but doesn't deny that there are mentally retarded prisoners currently on Pennsylvania's death row, according to Department of Corrections spokeswoman Lisa Aaron.
"The DOC isn't in a position to determine exactly how many death row inmates are mentally retarded. The same holds true for all other inmates," Aaron says. "We don't have an accurate figure because the courts have not yet determined the criteria."
That criterion, says Garis, has been adopted in 18 states as an IQ of 70 or below. The holdup, he says, is that the District Attorneys Association, among others, wants to argue whether 70 is an acceptable cutoff number, or whether mental retardation should be classified at an even lower number, say, 60.
"It's just another way to muddy the water and slow down the process of real justice for these inmates," Garis says. "The state will continue to hold mentally retarded people on death row for as long as possible, despite the ruling of the Supreme Court. The fact is, if there are mentally retarded people on death row, simple common decency would dictate that we get them off death row right now. How can any state consider executing a person of such limited capacity? I certainly wouldn't want that on my conscience."
