HARRISBURG PATRIOT-NEWS Editorial: …Since the 1990s, Pennsylvania has executed just three people. All waived their appeals and went voluntarily to the death chamber at Rockview State Prison in Centre. The last was Gary Heidnik of Philadelphia in 1999.
The current capital system is choked with appeals that cost the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. The process drags on for years, slowly winding through state and federal court, each delay prolonging the agony of the victims’ families…
It’s time for Pennsylvania to end this grisly charade and join 18 other states, including its neighbors in Maryland, New Jersey and New York, by repealing its death penalty statute and resentencing its death row population, as appropriate, to life without possibility of parole…. (more)
