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Thursday, March 06, 2003

By Sally Kalson, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Gov. Ed Rendell will not support a moratorium on the death penalty at this time but said yesterday he will review a massive report on bias in the Pennsylvania justice system with an open mind.

It was Rendell's first public comment on the report, issued Tuesday by a Pennsylvania Supreme Court committee on racial and gender bias.

The committee found death row inmates to be disproportionately black compared to their percentage of the overall population and called for a halt to the death penalty until its fairness can be ensured.

Rendell, however, said the report focused on the wrong statistics.

"We'll review the Supreme Court study ... but you have to look at the pool of people who commit first-degree murder," he said at a press conference.

If the number who go to death row is disproportionate to the number who commit first-degree murder, he said, "that's a fairer test."

"But having said that, we will certainly review the report and, by the way, if the court issues an order, I am bound legally to follow it."

But Lisette McCormick, the committee's executive director, said the unfairness starts much earlier in the process, with who is charged with first-degree murder in the first place, and how effective their defense is, given the underfunding of public defenders who represent poor clients in capital cases.

"The issue is what happens between the charging of the offense and the sentencing after trial," she said.

The report -- available online at www.aopc.org/index.asp -- notes that Pennsylvania has the fourth-largest death row in the nation, with 245 inmates currently sentenced to death (although only three have been executed since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment). Two-thirds of those on death row are minorities, who make up only 11 percent of the population.

"Gov. Rendell believes the death penalty has to be administered as fairly as possible," spokesman Ken Snyder said later. "That's why he supports DNA testing for all death row inmates who request it and a high quality defense in capital cases."

Rendell helped write the current death penalty laws, and, as the former Philadelphia district attorney, "he believes those who commit heinous crimes should receive the death penalty," Snyder said.

Sally Kalson can be reached at skalson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1610.