Keep Your Promise

Why Rendell should end the death penalty.

by Jerome Montes

It’s time for Gov. Ed Rendell to honor his promise regarding death row.

During his election run, the former mayor and prosecutor said he would impose a moratorium on the state death penalty if he saw evidence of unfairness. It’s not a move without precedent. Illinois Gov. George Ryan issued a moratorium for his state in 2000 after 13 death row inmates were exonerated. Recently, the North Carolina State Senate backed a measure halting executions after finding that the Tarheel State’s execution system is plagued with racial and economic inequalities.

Now it's time for Rendell to correct the same inequalities in our state and impose a Pennsylvania moratorium. The governor has asked for evidence of these inequalities. According to a report released in March by the Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Justice System, the evidence is available and overwhelming. The Committee, which was appointed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, recommended that a moratorium be imposed.

The Committee's most chilling discovery involved the racial composition of Pennsylvania's death row population. Statistics show that nearly 70 percent of these inmates are minorities, most of them black. The minority population of Pennsylvania as a whole comes to about 11 percent.

Death penalty supporters have been quick to dismiss the Committee's statistical findings. The reason so many minorities in Pennsylvania are facing the death penalty, they argue, is because minorities commit so many homicides.

It's a simple argument, and like many simple arguments it ignores the story within the statistics. The truth is that skin color has a tremendous effect on both the conviction rate and sentencing involved with capital crimes.

Nowhere is this more evident than here in Philadelphia, which accounts for about half of all the inmates sent to Pennsylvania's death row. As author and journalist David Lindorff points out, "The Philadelphia DA's office has long been, and continues to be, the main cause of much of the inherent racism in the state's justice system."

Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham, who The New York Times Magazine once dubbed "the deadliest DA," has made her reputation in seeking the death penalty as often as state statutes allow. Throughout her career, Abraham has insisted that her ruthlessness is race-neutral.

The findings of the Committee tell a very different story. As one Committee member said, the very process of charging alleged killers is racially biased. White killers are more likely to be charged with a lesser offense like manslaughter. By contrast, black killers committing the same offense are often charged with first-degree murder, which makes them prime candidates for the death penalty.

Jury selection is heavily stacked against defendants of color. One former Philadelphia prosecutor recorded a videotape that taught new prosecutors how to keep blacks off juries without appearing racist, and the Committee reports that the practice of deliberately excluding black jury members continues today. Such a practice makes it virtually impossible for blacks to receive a fair trial, and much more likely for them to receive a conviction.

That likelihood is exacerbated by the fact that many minorities do not have the resources to mount an effective legal defense in a capital trial. In Philadelphia County, about four in five of these defendants are assigned court-appointed attorneys, who rarely have enough funds for expert witnesses, investigators and forensic tests. By contrast, Philadelphia prosecutors are allotted millions of dollars to litigate a single capital case.

Race also plays an important part in sentencing for violent crimes. The Committee found that "being African American increased the chance of a defendant receiving a death sentence to the same degree that the presence of an aggravating circumstance of Œtorture' or Œgrave risk of death' increased the chance of a non-African American getting a death sentence."

Since 1973, over 100 death row inmates have been exonerated nationwide. Four of these were from Pennsylvania. All the evidence indicates that there could be other inmates on Pennsylvania's death row who don't belong there. Why hasn't Rendell acted? His reluctance is probably rooted in the fact that as a prosecutor, he himself supported the death penalty.

But it is one thing to support the death penalty based on a philosophical or moral position. It's quite another to support a system that is obviously unjust. No matter how Rendell might feel about the death penalty, he can't escape the hard facts. For the sake of all those who don't belong on death row, it's time for Gov. Rendell to honor his promise.

Jerome Montes is a Temple University graduate student studying journalism. If you would like to respond to this Slant or have one of your own (850 words), contact Howard Altman, City Paper editor in chief, 123 Chestnut St., third floor, Phila., PA 19106 or e-mail altman@citypaper.net.

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