In the past 15 years, courts in five states have struck down the death penalty. Could Pennsylvania become the sixth? That’s a question in play after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court opened the door to a legal challenge that charges the state’s capital punishment law is unconstitutional, reports the Allentown (PA) Morning Call. Brought by two death row inmates, the petition asks the court to skip its usual procedures and hear a broad challenge to whether the death penalty violates the state constitution’s ban on cruel punishments. With a shift in power on the court — five Democrats versus two Republicans — the justices said they will consider whether to take up the issue. That’s provoked a flurry of legal filings by groups opposed to the death penalty. It has drawn concern from capital punishment supporters, who say there is no reason for the court to undo the will of the legislature.
The petition by the Federal Community Defender Office in Philadelphia cites a recent legislative study that offered a blistering critique of the death penalty. The report called for a host of reforms, saying that in the modern era of capital punishment, Pennsylvania has exonerated six death row inmates, while executing just three. So-called king’s bench petitions are rarely granted, because they ask the Supreme Court to leapfrog the typical process, under which the lower courts serve as the first arbiter of legal questions. Atorneys for Jermont Cox and Kevin Marinelli, who were separately sentenced to death in 1995, argue that longtime problems with Pennsylvania’s death penalty make it one of those extraordinary cases. The Pennsylvania attorney general’s office opposes the petition. There are 142 prisoners on death row in Pennsylvania, which has been under a moratorium on executions that Gov. Tom Wolf declared in 2015.