Prosecutors clash over Pa.’s death penalty

• Ed Mahon
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Ed Mahon comes to Spotlight PA from PA Post, where he covered state politics and policy, produced radio stories that were broadcast on public media stations throughout the state and on NPR’s national newscasts, and co-wrote a weekday newsletter. Prior to joining PA Post, Ed worked for six years as an investigative and political reporter for the York Daily Record, part of the USA Today Network. His reporting on failures in Pennsylvania’s system for protecting domestic abuse victims was a finalist in the national 2018 Livingston Awards for Young Journalists in the local reporting category. He was also part of a team whose coverage of the criminal justice system, including the aggressive use of civil asset forfeiture by York County prosecutors, received the 2018 G. Richard Dew Award for Journalistic Service from the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association. Before joining the York Daily Record, Ed covered K-12 education at the Centre Daily Times in State College and worked as a stringer for suburban sections of The Philadelphia Inquirer. He grew up in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

 Kimberly Paynter / WHYY

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner held a press conference with faith leaders arguing that the Pa. death penalty is unconstitutional.

‘It really is about poverty. It really is about race’

Kimberly Paynter / WHYY

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner held a press conference with faith leaders arguing that the Pa. death penalty is unconstitutional.

• Philadelphia’s top prosecutor is asking the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to declare the death penalty unconstitutional, saying that it is applied in an unreliable and arbitrary manner. “Out of 155 Philadelphia death sentences, 72 percent of them have been overturned,” Krasner said at a news conference Tuesday, WHYY reports. “That is a big deal.”

• The Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association, a group that Krasner is not a member of, filed an amicus brief in the same case, defending the death penalty. The group wrote that prosecutors “know that certain cases cry out for the most severe punishment. To have the possibility of such a sentence removed entirely from the criminal justice system because some of those sentences will ultimately be overturned is to make the system less just.”

• The dispute is happening while a death penalty moratorium exists in Pennsylvania. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf imposed one in 2015, shortly after taking office. The Associated Press’ Mark Scolforo has more on the dispute between Krasner and the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association, as well as the murders in Philadelphia and Northumberland County that led to the appeal.

Best of the rest

Marie Cusick / StateImpact Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding, Forest Insect Pest Aid Jay Losiewicz, and Governor Tom Wolf survey damage from spotted lanternflies in Harrisburg.

• The spotted lanternfly is seen as a significant threat to Pennsylvania’s grape, tree fruit, hardwood and nursery industries, StateImpact Pennsylvania’s Marie Cusick reports. Marie followed Gov. Tom Wolf as he toured an area infested with them.

• Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick of Bucks County was the only Pennsylvania Republican to vote in favor of a House resolution that condemned President Donald Trump’s “racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color… .”

• A brick bearing the name of a Ku Klux Klan-affiliated group is part of a public monument in Wilkes-Barre, the Times Leader reports. And an attorney for the city said the brick will remain, despite calls for its removal.