The Pennsylvania Abolitionists United Against the Death Penalty asks for your help the first week of March as it demands a moratorium on executions in Pennsylvania. Our group will hold several local events coinciding with Abolition Day, which commemorates the state of Michigan’s abolition of the death penalty on March 1, 1847, and the one-year anniversary of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee on Racial and Gender Bias recommendation to declare a death penalty moratorium in our state. The anti-death penalty movement has gained considerable momentum since last March, but we need greater community involvement to win this fight.

In March of 2003, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee on Racial and Gender Bias issued a 554 page report after three years of study. The committee concluded, among other things, "There are strong indications that Pennsylvania’s capital justice system does not operate in an evenhanded manner…. Empirical studies conducted in Pennsylvania to date demonstrate that, at least in some counties, race plays a major, if not overwhelming, role in the imposition of the death penalty." As we approach the one-year anniversary of this landmark study, Governor Rendell is still unconvinced that the system is unfair. It’s much easier to keep one’s head in the sand then face up to the truth of the matter which is that our criminal justice system in Pennsylvania is broken.

The increasingly frequent "discovery" of innocent people on death row is no longer a rare or unlikely occurrence. It’s an undeniable fact. Nicholas Yarris’ recent exoneration after 21 years on Pennsylvania’s death row again underscores the need for a moratorium on the death penalty. Yarris was exonerated after three DNA tests proved that he was not involved in the commission of the crime for which he was convicted.

Pennsylvania’s capital justice system has disproportionately targeted minorities and the disadvantaged. There are approximately 230 people on death row in Pennsylvania (the fourth largest death row in the country). Almost 70% are African American or other minorities and approximately 20 have been determined by the prison system to be mentally retarded. There are also several people on death row who were juveniles when the crimes for which they were convicted were committed. Most of these people could not afford adequate legal counsel as well.

In 1989 the American Bar Association established a policy opposing the execution of mentally retarded people, taking the position that the execution of such individuals is unacceptable in a civilized society regardless of their guilt or innocence. The Supreme Court of the United States finally ruled in June of 2003 in the case of Atkins v. Virginia that the imposition of death on the mentally retarded is cruel and unusual punishment and therefore a violation of the United States Constitution. The Pennsylvania Senate also recently passed Senate Bill 26, which bans the death penalty in capital cases where the defendant is mentally retarded. This bill in now under consideration in the House, but is facing competition from House Bill 1073, which would deny most legal protection to mentally retarded defendants. The state District Attorney’s association supports this mockery of jurisprudence, which ignores the consensus definition of mental retardation by health professionals. Their more exclusive definition will raise conviction rates but lower our standards of justice and morality.

It is virtually a certainty that innocent people have been put to death in this country since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. One hundred twelve people have been exonerated and freed* since 1973 (six people in Pennsylvania alone). Ten people were exonerated and released from death row in the United States in 2003. However, 65 people were executed in the United States in 2003.

The Illinois Legislature recently undertook sweeping changes to the machinery of death in that state. The legislature unanimously has provided for videotaping of interrogations, prohibiting the seeking of the death penalty in cases which rely on the testimony of a single eyewitness, jailhouse informants or accomplices, greater access to DNA evidence and permitting appellate courts to overturn death sentences that are unjust even though such appeals may be out of time. In Pennsylvania, the priority seems to be pay raises for legislators rather than fundamental fairness in the judicial system.

Over 100 municipalities around the country have called for a moratorium on the death penalty while these questions are studied including several cities in Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh among others) and the City of New York. To date Governor Rendell is unmoved in his resolve not to impose a moratorium. In fact, he has signed at least six death warrants since taking office in January, 2003. Rather, Governor Rendell wants to study the issue some more. To risk the imposition of the death penalty on an innocent person is unconscionable.

Recently, the Pennsylvania Abolitionists have sponsored and helped organize a number of events showing the humanity of the condemned and the decrying the inhumanity of legalized execution. We held an art show of the work of death row artists and organized a rally against the death penalty in Harrisburg last October at which former Illinois governor George Ryan spoke.

On Thursday, March 4, the one-year anniversary of the release of the report by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Justice System, activists will demand that Rendell comply with the committee’s findings. Concerned citizens from across the Commonwealth will engage in a nonviolent direct action at the State Capitol in Harrisburg to convey in clear terms that we will not stand by and wait for our governor to demonstrate leadership on this critical human rights issue. It cannot be business as usual in Harrisburg as long as our elected leaders continue to place a higher priority on politics than on justice, fairness and human life.

The goals of the action are three-fold:

• to raise, in the governor’s consciousness, the level of urgency that the death penalty is a grave human rights issue in Pennsylvania and to demand, more assertively and dramatically than we have before, that he impose a moratorium on executions;

• to raise awareness among citizens of the Commonwealth that a moratorium is necessary;

• to heighten the level of urgency and commitment among those working to end the death penalty in Pennsylvania.

Details of the action are being developed, and more information will be available shortly. All participants will be required to take part in nonviolence training, which will be held in Harrisburg on Wednesday, March 3. A comprehensive planning meeting will take place the same day. Overnight accommodations will be arranged for out-of-town participants.

The action will be the culmination of a weeklong series of anti-death penalty events around the state marking the one-year anniversary of the State Supreme Court committee’s report. "Moratorium Week" will take place from February 27 - March 4 and will consist of a variety of activities, including vigils and demonstrations, lectures, debates, teach-ins, tabling, leafletting and sermons. Simultaneous demonstrations in conjunction with the Harrisburg action will take place at or near the governor’s regional offices in Pittsburgh, Erie, Philadelphia and Wilkes-Barre. For information on the March 4 demonstration in downtown Pittsburgh, call 412-242-5171.

It is clear that while significant progress has been made in the movement to end the death penalty in Pennsylvania, the level of urgency must now be raised. More than 230 men and women remain on our state’s death row; nearly 70 percent of them are people of color, and more than 90 percent of them were too poor to afford a lawyer at their initial trial. Twice as many death row prisoners in Pennsylvania have been exonerated (six) than have been executed (three) since the death penalty was reinstated here. And the great likelihood is that more innocent people are sitting on death row today.

Each of us who is concerned about this human rights crisis in our state must ask ourselves a fundamental question: what am I willing to do to help make the death penalty a remnant of Pennsylvania’s past?

Are we willing to take our struggle to the next level, to honor the memories of those who went to any lengths to secure basic civil rights, women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery? Will we use those and other movements as examples of the power and necessity of nonviolent resistance? Will we remember the actions and words of those who preceded us, of people like King and Gandhi and free-speech movement leader Mario Savio, who 40 years ago articulated the importance of civil disobedience this way:

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop."

If you would like to become involved, the Pittsburgh chapter of the PA Abolitionists, meets the first Wednesday of every month at the First Unitarian Church at the corner of Morewood and Ellsworth in Shadyside. The local email address is hildebrew@aol.com. The statewide organization also has additional information at its website pa-abolitionists.org and can be reached at 215-729-8720. Please join us this season to help rid our state of the injustice of legalized execution.

*Fred Thomas was not freed. He died in jail after exoneration when he was refused release pending appeal.

- by Martha Conley, Joshua Coene and Kurt Rosenberg