[JURIST] Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf [official website] declared a moratorium [memorandum] on the death penalty Friday, which will remain in effect until he receives and reviews a report from the Pennsylvania Task Force and Advisory Committee on Capital Punishment. The governor expressed concerns over serious flaws in the death penalty system in the state, which he said have made sentencing “error prone, expensive, and anything but infallible.” He explained there may be serious questions of fairness, particularly because studies over the years have shown racial and gender bias in the capital justice system. Currently, Pennsylvania has no data collection system to analyze these disparities. According to Wolf, there are concerns about a lack of funding for capital indigent defendants, as well as inadequate procedures to protect the innocent. The use of the death penalty, according to the memorandum, has cost Pennsylvania taxpayers close to $600 million. The cost of housing a death row inmate is $10,000 greater [Reuters report] than housing other inmates, without accounting for costs of appeals. Six death row inmates have been exonerated in Pennsylvania since the death penalty reinstatement in 1978, and 186 people are currently on death row in the state.

Throughout the US, the death penalty remains a controversial issue with many states seeking to end the practice or institute reforms. In January the Washington state legislature [official website] proposed bills to eliminate [JURIST report] the death penalty. Also in January the US Supreme Court granted certiorari to determine [JURIST report] whether Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. Last month Indiana state senator Lonnie Randolph [official profile] introduced Senate Bill 136 to end the death penalty [JURIST report] in the state. Four death row inmates filed a complaint [JURIST report] in December challenging a measure providing for the confidentiality of entities involved in the manufacture of drugs for use in capital punishment by lethal injection, and of the persons involved in executing a sentence of capital punishment.