Legal Experts, Policy Advocates Emphasize Decrease in Pennsylvanians’ Support for the Death Penalty in Year-End Briefing
December 16, 2025
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Andy Hoover, Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, andy@hoovercomms.com
Kathleen Lucas, Pennsylvanians Against the Death Penalty, klucas@padp.org
Robert Dunham, Death Penalty Policy Project, r.dunham@phillipsblack.org
PHILADELPHIA - A team of anti-death penalty advocates and legal experts summarized the year in capital punishment in Pennsylvania at a media briefing today, emphasizing signs of decreased public support for the ultimate punishment. But the advocates warned that the commonwealth’s death penalty system continues to operate despite Governor Josh Shapiro’s moratorium on executions, pointing to a “rogue” district attorney in Southwest Pennsylvania as an example.
The briefing was held a day after the release of the Death Penalty Information Center’s (DPI) nationwide year-end report and 11 days after Shapiro issued his first reprieve of execution of 2025. The DPI report cites developments in Pennsylvania, including a challenge to Washington County District Attorney Jason Walsh’s use of the death penalty and the acquittal of one of the defendants who brought the challenge.
“Jason Walsh is the latest iteration of the ‘bad actor’ in Pennsylvania’s death penalty system,” said Frances Harvey, interim executive director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation. “In the four decades since capital punishment was reinstated, there have always been stakeholders in the system who abuse their authority. And there will always be people like that until the death penalty is repealed in Pennsylvania.”
In July, the Atlantic Center filed a petition asking the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to intervene and provide oversight of capital cases in Washington County. The petition accuses Walsh of filing capital charges without providing the evidence necessary for a death penalty case on multiple occasions.
The court has yet to rule on that petition. In October, it took a Washington County jury less than 90 minutes to acquit Joshua George, one of the defendants who brought the challenge.
In the briefing, the advocates also cited new polling data released in October that showed a significant drop for support for the death penalty in Pennsylvania when alternative sentences were available for someone convicted of murder. Respondents’ support for the death penalty was just 29 percent, compared to 58 percent support for other, non-capital sentences. In a 2015 poll with a similar question, 42 percent of respondents supported the death penalty.
This year’s poll, which was conducted by Susquehanna Polling and Research, also found that a majority of Pennsylvanians have little-to-no trust that the government can implement the death penalty fairly.
“Pennsylvanians are right to distrust the government’s use of the death penalty,” said Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Policy Project and a nationally recognized expert in capital punishment. “The abuses in Washington County are just the tip of the iceberg. More than 50 Pennsylvania death sentences have been overturned because of prosecutorial misconduct. Prosecutors in more than a dozen counties have been caught suppressing exculpatory evidence. The state has provided substandard representation to death row prisoners for years, which has caused another 140 death sentences to be reversed.
“Governor Shapiro is right that the death penalty is fallible and that executions are irreversible. Pennsylvania has sent more than 20 innocent people to death row since capital punishment was reintroduced in the commonwealth in the 1970s. History proves that our state can’t be trusted with capital punishment.”
It’s been 26 years since the last execution in Pennsylvania and nearly 11 years since Governor Tom Wolf imposed the execution moratorium that Shapiro continued in 2023. On December 5, the governor issued his first execution reprieve of the year and renewed his call for the General Assembly to pass legislation ending the death penalty.
“Without abolition, capital prosecutions and appeals continue to move forward and more and more unfairly tried and unjustly condemned prisoners are at risk of execution,” Dunham said.
Two bills currently before the state House of Representatives would repeal the death penalty in Pennsylvania. House Bill 888 was introduced by Republican Rep. Russ Diamond of Lebanon County in March, and Rep. Chris Rabb, a Democrat from Philadelphia, introduced HB 99 in October. Diamond’s legislation is co-sponsored by three Republicans and nine Democrats, while Rabb’s HB 99 is co-sponsored by 15 Democrats.
“There is bipartisan support in the legislature for repealing the death penalty,” said Akin Adepoju, a member of the board of directors of Pennsylvanians Against the Death Penalty. “Polling shows Pennsylvanians prefer alternatives to the death penalty. DAs are increasingly opting not to prosecute capital cases. And juries rarely return death sentences. The environment is pointing in one direction, and that’s toward an end of capital punishment in the commonwealth.”
The Pennsylvania-based advocates, who work together as part of the No Death Penalty PA campaign, were joined by Sabrina Butler Smith, communications specialist for Witness to Innocence, a national nonprofit organization led by death row exonerees. Butler Smith was the first woman to be exonerated after being sentenced to death in the United States, having been convicted and sentenced to death in Mississippi for a tragic death in which no crime occurred.
There was one new death sentence in Pennsylvania in 2025, the first since 2022, and George’s case was the only other capital case to go to trial in the commonwealth this year. Prosecutors in multiple counties, including Allegheny, Lycoming, Lebanon, and Bucks, chose not to seek death sentences in high profile cases. In Philadelphia, the district attorney has continued his pledge to not bring capital charges in any case, a practice that started in 2017.
There are currently 95 people on Pennsylvania’s death row.
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