Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty

Campaigns

• Please Support Pennsylvania's Moratorium on Executions

  * Since 1973, at least 150 men and women, including six in Pennsylvania, have walked off our nation’s death rows after evidence revealed that they were sentenced to die for crimes they did not commit. * The DNA era has taught us that murder cases are often riddled with problems, including mistaken eyewitnesses, incompetent lawyers, shoddy forensics, jailhouse snitches, and coerced confessions, but DNA alone can’t solve the problem because it isn’t available in most cases. * About 90% of those persons facing capital charges cannot afford to hire their own attorney. On the national level, poor defendants sentenced to die have been represented by attorneys who were drunk, asleep, or completely inexperienced. The death penalty is like a lottery of geography, race, and socio-economic status: * Almost 80% of those executed in the U.S. were convicted of murdering a white person even though people of color are the victims in about half of all homicides. * Numerous states have found that a large percentage of death sentences originate from just one county. * The death penalty is supposed to be reserved for “the worst of the worst” – but many times the most heinous crimes end up with a deal or a life sentence while robberies “gone wrong” or even accomplices are sentenced to die. The death penalty’s long and complicated process has been harmful to murder victims’ families: * The death penalty process is longer because a life is on the line. Yet the extra time has delayed justice for victims’ families, sometimes leaving them in limbo for decades wondering if the sentence will be carried out. * Capital cases are so riddled with errors that the majority of them are reversed at some point – forcing victims’ families to endure one retrial after another. * The death penalty has split families apart, forcing relatives with different views on capital punishment to engage in a polarizing debate at the time when they need each other most.

  137 of 200 Signatures

  Created by Philadelphia Campaign to Stop Death Penalty Prosecutions & Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
• Pennsylvania's Death Penalty is Broken: It's Time to End It!

  Governor Tom Wolf recently halted all executions in Pennsylvania. Now is the time to end the death penalty for good. Death penalty cases cost taxpayers far more than locking up prisoners for the rest of their lives, while providing no additional benefit to society. By replacing the death penalty with life without parole, we could free up millions of dollars that could be redirected to other public safety needs, or to help murder victims' families. Replacing the death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of parole also ensures that we’ll never execute an innocent person. At least 150 people have been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in the U.S., including six from Pennsylvania, and some innocent people have even been executed.

  672 of 800 Signatures

  Created by Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
• Please Vote 'No' on HR 143 and Support Gov. Wolf's Death Penalty Moratorium

  The governor's decision to pause executions is the right decision for our state. In 2011, the Pennsylvania Senate passed Senate Resolution No. 6, “Directing the Joint State Government Commission to establish a bipartisan task force and an advisory committee to conduct a study of capital punishment in this Commonwealth and to report their findings and recommendations.” The results of the study will be presented to the legislature and the governor. It is only right to pause executions while awaiting this report. In a series of articles published in December 2014, the Reading Eagle found that Pennsylvania taxpayers have spent over $350 million on the death penalty over a period in which the state has carried out just three executions. All three executions involved inmates who had dropped their appeals. Our system is clearly costly and broken, the governor is right to take a closer look. Read HR 143: http://openstates.org/pa/bills/2015-2016/HR143/

  404 of 500 Signatures

  Created by Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty