Gov. Josh Shapiro said Thursday he will not allow Pennsylvania to execute any inmates while he is in office and called for the state’s lawmakers to repeal the death penalty (article available here).
Shapiro, inaugurated last month, said he will refuse to sign execution warrants and will use his power as governor to grant reprieves to any inmate whose execution is scheduled.
In doing so, he is exercising an authority used for eight years by his predecessor, Gov. Tom Wolf, to effectively impose a moratorium on the death penalty in a state where it has been sparsely used. Shapiro went further, asking lawmakers to repeal the death penalty and calling it fallible and irreversible.
“Today, I am respectfully calling on the General Assembly to work with me to abolish the death penalty once and for all here in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said. The state, he said, “should not be in the business of putting people to death.” The first execution warrant came to his desk last week, Shapiro said.
Twenty-seven states allow the death penalty, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
On the campaign trail last year for governor, Shapiro had said he was morally opposed to the death penalty, even though he had run for attorney general in 2016 as a supporter of the death penalty for the most heinous cases. Shapiro is shifting his stance amid shrinking support nationally for the death penalty.
Pennsylvania has 101 men and women on its shrinking death row, according to statistics from the Department of Corrections. The state has executed three people since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, as courts and now governors have blocked every other death sentence thus far.
All three men who were executed gave up on their appeals voluntarily. The state’s most recent execution took place in 1999.