Pennsylvania is getting back into the execution business. This will be the first time in 50 years that PA has executed a non-volunteer. Two men were scheduled for execution this fall. While each of them had their execution stayed, neither of them are safe from execution. A third man will be given an execution date very soon.
Founded in 1997, PADP continues our work to educate and mobilize community members around the abolition of the death penalty. Our central office is in York PA but we have chapters throughout the state. We convene a coalition of organizations who support a moratorium and/or abolition of capital punishment in PA. Recent developments include:
Ongoing government-sponsored study of PA's broken death penalty system began this year
Five states in five years have abolished the death penalty; Connecticut is the most recent one
Maryland's legislature has voted to abolish the death penalty. Governor O'Malley will sign the bill later this year
Membership growth
Increasing support from legislators
Lots of media attention
142nd exoneration of an individual sentenced to death in the USA
Discovery of a judge's plan to exonerate an innocent man that had not been public knoweldge previously. That same man, Cameron Todd WIllingham, was executed by the state of Texas.
