Credit: PA Internet News Service
Two bills that would abolish the death penalty in Pennsylvania advanced out of the House Judiciary Committee on Monday.
House Bill 99 and House Bill 888 were moved out of committee and to the full House in party-line votes.
State Rep. Christopher Rabb, D-Philadelphia, the primary sponsor of HB 99, argued that the fallibility of the justice system makes the death penalty unsustainable.
“Not only is the death penalty an ineffective deterrent to violent crime, but it also costs the state an incredible amount of money, time, and resources,” Rabb said. “Even if just one innocent life is taken at the hands of the state, that is too much for me to bear.”
The committee also advanced HB 888 from State Rep. Russ Diamond, R-Lebanon.
Diamond, who frames the issue as a “moral minefield,” argued that capital punishment is inconsistent with pro-life values and Christian beliefs.
“Abolishing the death penalty aligns with pro-life values by affirming that the state should not take life as punishment, even in response to the gravest of crimes. Every life is sacred, and the role of government should not be to decide who lives and who dies, but to protect and promote life wherever possible,” Diamond wrote.
Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Policy Project, testified that the system remains “geographically arbitrary and racially discriminatory.”
Dunham spoke of what he called a “serious innocence problem,” noting that 13 individuals sentenced to death in Pennsylvania have been exonerated, including one in 2024. He stated his research documented at least five instances where the state executed innocent defendants.
Since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1978, only three people have been executed.
Pennsylvania has not carried out an execution since Gary Heidnik was put to death in 1999.
According to the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, 95 people remain on death row, but executions are under a moratorium.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat and former state attorney general, has called on the legislature to abolish the practice. A former supporter of the death penalty, he has had his own shift in position after speaking with victims’ families.
The bills now move to the full House for debate.
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If passed, Pennsylvania would move away from a history that saw it execute more than 1,000 people prior to 1972, a period during which it was the third-largest user of capital punishment in the country, according to the American Bar Association.
