State & Federal
Pennsylvania
History of the Death Penalty
Pennsylvania began carrying out executions in the early 1600s in the form of public hangings. In 1834, Pennsylvania became the first state in the U.S. to outlaw public executions and move the gallows to county prisons. In 1913, the state’s capital punishment statute was amended to bring executions under the administration of the state rather than individual counties, and also changed the method of execution to electrocution. Between 1915 and 1962, there were 350 executions in Pennsylvania, including two women. The last prisoner executed by means of the electric chair was Elmo Smith in 1962. Pennsylvania passed a law in 1990 that changed the method of execution from electrocution to lethal injection, the current means of execution. Prior to 1976, Pennsylvania carried out 1,040 executions, the third highest number of any state. Only three executions have actually been carried out since reinstatement in 1976 despite the size of the state’s death row, which for more than two decades was the fourth largest in the nation. The Commonwealth’s death row has declined steadily in size from 246 in October 2001 to 175 in July 2016, without any executions, primarily as a result of death sentences being overturned in the courts and defendants being resentenced to life or less or acquitted. It is now the country’s fifth largest death row.
The Reading Eagle reported in June 2016 that from the time the Commonwealth enacted its current death penalty statute in September 1978 through 2015, Pennsylvania had sentenced 408 prisoners to death. Of those, 191 had subsequently been resentenced to life or less or released (46.8%), including 169 resentenced to life (41.4%); 16 resentenced to a term of years (3.9%); and 6 exonerated (1.5%). 181 remained on death row (44.4%), including 28 whose convictions or death sentences had been overturned but who were awaiting further court proceedings. 33 had died on death row other than by execution (8.1%). 3 had been executed (0.7%).
In 1931, Pennsylvania executed sixteen-year-old Alexander McClay Williams in the state’s electric chair on false charges that he had murdered Vida Robare, a white woman who served as a school matron at the youth facility to which Williams had been committed. Williams — the youngest person ever put to death in the Commonwealth — was tried, convicted, and condemned by an all-White, all-male jury in less than a day. He was executed without an appeal.
Robare had been stabbed 47 times with an ice pick and suffered two broken ribs and a skull fracture but Williams had no blood on him. Law enforcement submitted a bloody handprint from the crime scene for expert analysis but neither presented the results at trial nor disclosed them to the defense. Police never investigated Robare’s abusive ex-husband as a possible suspect even though she had recently obtained a divorce from him based on his “extreme cruelty.” After hours of police interrogation under undocumented circumstances, Williams confessed to the murder. However, the confession did not match the circumstances of the crime. A 1931 photograph shows Williams with what appears to have a black eye sustained during police interrogation.
Williams was represented at trial by William Ridley, the first African American admitted to the Bar of Delaware County, who was provided just $10 investigate and defend the case. Year’s later, Ridley’s great-grandson, Sam Lemon, and Williams’ family initiated efforts to clear his name. Lemon was able to obtain Robare’s death certificate, which listed Williams as her murderer before he even had been charged with the crime. On June 13, 2022, a judge of the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas posthumously vacated Williams’ conviction, citing “numerous fundamental due process violations.” The District Attorney’s office formally dropped charges against Williams, exonerating him 91 years after his wrongful execution.
Timeline
1834 - Pennsylvania becomes the first state to outlaw public executions and move the gallows to county prisons.
1913 - Pennsylvania’s capital punishment statute is amended to bring executions under the administration of the state rather than individual counties.
1913 - Electrocution becomes Pennsylvania’s main method of execution.
1962 - Elmo Smith becomes the last prisoner to be executed by the electric chair.
1972 - The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania rules the Commonwealth’s death penalty sentencing procedures unconstitutional. As a result, Pennsylvania’s death row was emptied and sentences were reduced to life.
1974 - Overriding Governor Shapp’s veto, the Pennsylvania legislature reenacts the death penalty, but this law is found unconstitutional in 1977.
1978 - Pennsylvania’s death penalty is reinstated when a revised version of the death penalty statute previously in place is passed.
1990 - Pennsylvania passes a law changing the method of execution from electrocution to lethal injection.
2002 - Governor Mark Schweiker signs legislation allowing prisoners access to DNA testing if it may have a bearing on the verdict in their case.
2014 - Four news organizations file suit in federal court challenging Pennsylvania’s secrecy about the source of its lethal injection drugs.
2015 - Governor Tom Wolf announces a moratorium on executions. The moratorium grants reprieves to each death row prisoner who does not receive a stay of execution from the courts.
2015 - Pennsylvania Supreme Court unanimously upholds Governor Wolf’s execution moratorium.
2017 - U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit declares Pennsylvania’s practice of keeping capital defendants in solitary confinement after courts have overturned their death sentences unconstitutional.
2020 - A federal district court judge approves a settlement that officially ends the state’s policy of mandatory permanent solitary confinement for prisoners on death row.
2023 - Governor Josh Shapiro announces that he will continue his predecessor’s moratorium on executions and calls upon the General Assembly to repeal the death penalty.
Famous Cases
Mumia Abu-Jamal was charged with the 1981 murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner and both the conviction and the subsequent death sentence sparked fierce controversy. Throughout his three-decade stay on Pennsylvania’s death row, Abu-Jamal’s supporters maintained that he is innocent. Organizations including Amnesty International and the City Government of Paris have alleged that the trial was tainted by racial discrimination and prosecutorial misconduct. While on death row, Abu-Jamal published many works, including a collection of memoirs Live From Death Row. His death sentence was overturned by a federal court as a result of an unconstitutional jury instruction in the penalty phase of his trial. That ruling was initially reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court, which directed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to consider the implications of a recent case it had decided. On remand, the Third Circuit again overturned Abu-Jamal’s death sentence and the Supreme Court declined to review that ruling. Maureen Faulkner (wife of Daniel Faulkner), as well as the Fraternal Order of Police, continued for many years to push for the sentence of death to be carried out. However, after the Supreme Court’s decision, she said she was willing to accept a life sentence, and the Philadelphia District Attorney agreed to withdraw the death penalty from the case. Abu-Jamal is now serving a life sentence.
Notable Exonerations
Nicholas Yarris was convicted in 1982 for the abduction, rape and murder of a young woman returning home from a day of work at the local mall. DNA evidence was collected at the crime scene but wasn’t the primary evidence in Yarris’ conviction. Multiple eyewitnesses testified to having seen a man resembling Yarris loitering in the vicinity of the shopping mall from which the victim was abducted. The prosecution also presented testimony from a prison guard and a jailhouse informant claiming that Yarris had confessed. Blood evidence was found that was the same blood type as Yarris. In 1989, Yarris sought postconviction DNA testing that was deemed inconclusive. Years later, in 2003, more sophisticated DNA testing had been developed. DNA evidence from blood on the killer’s gloves, skin under the victim’s fingernails, and semen from the victim’s panties were determined to have come a single unidentified source, who was not Nick Yarris. Yarris was released from death row, making him the 13th person exonerated from death row based on DNA evidence. The real perpetrator in the case has yet to be determined.
Ten other men have been exonerated from Pennsylvania’s death row, including six from Philadelphia, and Frederick Thomas died on the row of terminal cancer while the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office appealed a judge’s ruling that no jury would have convicted him had it known a variety of facts that were not disclosed to it at the time of trial.
Milestones in Abolition/Reinstatement
In Commonwealth v. Bradley (1972), the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled the Commonwealth’s death penalty sentencing procedures unconstitutional, implementing the Supreme Court’s decision in Furman v. Georgia. Death row was emptied and sentences were judicially reduced to life. In 1974, overriding Governor Shapp’s veto, the legislature reenacted the death penalty, but this law was also found unconstitutional in 1977.
In 1978, a revised version of the death penalty statute was passed, again over Governor Shapp’s veto, reinstating the death penalty in Pennsylvania.
In 2011, the state legislature passed SR 6, initiating a study of the death penalty in Pennsylvania. The study took seven years to complete and was released in June 2018. Its numerous recommendations for reform included establishing a state-funded capital defender office, banning the death penalty for severely mentally ill defendants, and making public the details of the state’s execution protocol. None of these recommendations has been enacted.
On February 13, 2015, Governor Tom Wolf announced a moratorium on executions, citing concerns about innocence, racial bias, and the death penalty’s effects on victims’ families. Governor Wolf indicated that the moratorium would be implemented by granting reprieves to each death row prisoner who did not receive a stay of execution from the courts.
Other Interesting Facts
Pennsylvania has the most onerous clemency prerequisites of any state, requiring the five-member Board of Pardons, which includes the Attorney General, the Lt. Governor, a corrections expert, a victim advocate, and a mental health expert, to unanimously recommend clemency before the Governor has the power to consider commutation. It has not granted any death row inmate clemency since Furman v. Georgia.
Pennsylvania has an automatic death warrant statute that requires the Governor or Corrections Secretary to prematurely set execution dates at the conclusion of the direct appeal process and within 30 days of the termination of any judicial stay. This results in a series of death warrants being signed before statutorily and constitutional mandated state and federal appeals have been filed. As a result, courts have stayed more than 95% of the death warrants. Governor Wolf has refused to sign death warrants; his Secretary of Corrections has issued notices of execution.
The three prisoners executed since 1978 have all been volunteers with serious mental health issues, whom courts found to have waived their rights to an appeals process.
Resources
- American Bar Association Pennsylvania Death Penalty Assessment
- Department of Corrections
- Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
- Atlantic Center for Capital Representation
- Defender Association of Philadelphia
- Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association
- Victims’ services
- United States Court of Appeals (Third Circuit) death penalty case list
The administration of Pennsylvania death penalty has been the subject of a number of reports and analyses. You can find links to several of them below:
- The Pennsylvania Supreme Court and Third Judicial Circuit of the U.S., Report of the Joint Task Force on Death Penalty Litigation in Pennsylvania (July 1990)
- The Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Justice System, Final Report of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Justice System (2005), Chapter 5, Indigent Defense in Pennsylvania, and Chapter 6, Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Imposition of the Death Penalty
DPIC Testimonies at Pennsylvania Legislative Hearings
Testimony before the Pennsylvania Senate Government Management and Cost Study Commission (June 7, 2010)
Testimony before the House Judiciary Committee (June 11, 2015)
Pennsylvania Execution Totals Since 1976
News & Developments
News
Mar 01, 2024
Death-Sentenced Philadelphia Prisoner Daniel Gwynn Exonerated After Nearly 30 Years
On February 27, 2024, Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara A. McDermott approved a motion from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office to dismiss first-degree murder, arson, and aggravated assault charges against 54-year-old death-sentenced prisoner Daniel Gwynn. Mr. Gwynn is the 197th person exonerated after being sentenced to death since 1973, according to DPIC’s Innocence Database. “Today is mostly for us a day of tremendous relief and sadness, a guy like him, an innocent soul spent that amount of time waiting for his execution languishing in jail,” said Mr. Gwynn’s defense attorney…
Read MoreDec 19, 2023
Noel Montalvo Exonerated Twenty Years After Pennsylvania Sent Him to Death Row
On December 18, Pennsylvania dropped all homicide charges against Noel Montalvo, twenty years after he was convicted and sentenced to death in York County. Mr. Montalvo (pictured) pled guilty to one count of tampering with evidence in exchange for release and one year on probation. The Death Penalty Information Center has determined that Mr. Montalvo meets the criteria for inclusion on our exoneration list because the charges that placed him on death row have been dismissed.
Read MoreNov 14, 2023
$9.1 million wrongful conviction settlement for Pennsylvania death row exoneree Walter Ogrod
Death-row exoneree Walter Ogrod’s federal lawsuit against the City of Philadelphia and members of the Philadelphia Police Department was settled for $9.1 million on November 3, 2023. Mr. Ogrod, who was exonerated in 2020 after 23 years on death row, was initially convicted in 1996 based on a coerced confession and false testimony from jailhouse informants in a case further tainted by police and prosecutorial misconduct and inadequate legal representation at trial. In a statement confirming the settlement, officials said “The city remains committed to transparency in the pursuit of…
Read MoreNov 07, 2023
Pennsylvania House Committee Passes Death Penalty Repeal Bill
A bill to repeal the death penalty in Pennsylvania has passed a committee in the commonwealth’s House of Representatives. The Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee voted 15 – 10 in favor of HB 999 on October 31, 2023. That vote is the first step toward abolishing the death penalty in Pennsylvania, which has had a formal moratorium on executions since 2015 and has not executed anyone since 1999.
Read MoreAug 03, 2023
Jurors Sentence Robert Bowers to Death for 2018 Synagogue Shooting
On August 1, 2023, death-qualified federal jurors unanimously recommended a sentence of death for Robert Bowers, who they had earlier convicted of killing 11 Jewish worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018. The jury agreed with all five aggravating factors alleged by the prosecution during the penalty phase but rejected defense counsel’s argument that Mr. Bowers’ schizophrenia and delusions meant he should not be sentenced to death. He will be formally sentenced by the court on August 3, 2023. Family members of the victims, some of whom will address…
Read MoreJul 13, 2023
Jury Finds Defendant Eligible for Federal Death Penalty in Pittsburgh Synagogue Trial
The jury that found Richard Bowers guilty of all 63 federal charges he faces in connection with the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting found him eligible for the death penalty on July 13, 2023. Jurors deliberated for about two hours before finding that the prosecution had met its burden by proving that Mr. Bowers had the necessary intent to commit the crime and that the crime had specific aggravating factors for eligibility. These factors included the vulnerability of several of the victims. Defense counsel presented evidence of Mr. Bowers’ mental health…
Read MoreApr 12, 2023
EDITORIALS: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Calls on the Justice Department to ‘Drop the Death Penalty’ in Synagogue Shooting
On April 9, 2023, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called upon Attorney General Merrick Garland to withdraw the government’s pursuit of the death penalty and accept a plea deal for a mandatory life sentence in the mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. The editors noted that seeking a death sentence: “would, in effect, re-enact the worst case of anti-Semitic violence in U.S. history through witness testimony, media coverage and appeals that could continue for up to 20 years.” The trial is scheduled to begin soon with jury selection on…
Read MoreFeb 16, 2023
Pennsylvania Governor Announces Continuation of Moratorium on Executions and Calls for Legislation to Abolish the Death Penalty
On February 16, 2023, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro announced that he will continue his predecessor’s moratorium on executions and called upon the Pennsylvania General Assembly to repeal the death penalty.
Read MoreJan 09, 2023
Philadelphia Death-Row Survivor Christopher Williams Shot to Death at Funeral Less Than Two Years After Double Exoneration
Less than two years after being exonerated in two different cases, Philadelphia death-row exoneree Christopher Williams (pictured) has been murdered. Williams, who spent nearly three decades in prison, including 25 years on death row, for separate wrongful murder convictions, was fatally shot after attending the funeral of Tyree Little, another formerly incarcerated man, in North Philadelphia on December 16, 2022.
Read MoreDec 06, 2022
Midterm Elections: Moratorium Supporters, Reform Prosecutors Post Gains Despite Massive Campaign Efforts to Tie Reformers to Surge in Violent Crime
In a year that featured massive campaign advertising attempting to portray legal reformers as responsible for increases in violent crime, candidates committed to criminal legal reform or who promised to continue statewide moratoria on executions posted key election wins in the 2022 midterm elections. Defying a pre-election narrative forecasting a backlash against progressive prosecutors and conventional wisdom that fear of crime drives political outcomes, reform prosecutors were re-elected to office and gained new footholds in counties across the country.
Read MoreJun 21, 2022
Pennsylvania Teen Exonerated 91 Years After Sham Trial and Execution on Racially Motivated Charges that He Had Murdered a White Woman
An African-American teenager who was convicted and sentenced to death in Pennsylvania on false charges that he had murdered a white woman has been exonerated, 91 years after he was executed.
Read More