Despite surprising opposition from the GOP, Governor Rendell says capital punishment is fine by him.

When Ed Rendell was elected governor last November, Pennsylvania Democrats cheered their lungs out. Then Rendell proposed a state budget that would make any Republican proud, and the cheering stopped. Now, the faithful are really scratching their heads at the governor’s latest step further away from the party line: Despite a scathing indictment of Pennsylvania’s death penalty statutes and practices -- by a GOP-controlled Supreme Court committee -- Rendell stands fast to his claim that there is no evidence of unfairness in our system of capital punishment. Death penalty opponents aren’t hiding their disappointment in Rendell, and say they’re going to hold his feet to the fire until he at least agrees to consider the recommendations of the Supreme Court committee.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Justice System was impaneled under Republican Governor Tom Ridge in 1999 to study the fairness, or lack of fairness, inherent in our system of criminal justice. If the fact that a Republican governor would direct a Republican-controlled state Supreme Court to form a committee to study the issue is surprising in itself, even more shocking is the Committee's final conclusions and recommendations:

" [T]he Committee concludes that there are strong indications that Pennsylvania's capital justice system does not operate in an evenhanded manner. After controlling for the seriousness of the offense and other non-racial factors, researchers found that African-American defendants were sentenced to death at a significantly higher rate than similarly situated non-African Americans; researchers further concluded that one-third of African-American defendants on death row in Philadelphia County would have received life sentences if they were not African American."

The Committee's report goes on to state that prosecutors strike potential African-American jurors twice as often as non-African Americans, that attorneys assigned to capital cases are woefully undertrained and undercompensated and that Pennsylvania juries are four times more likely to determine death as an appropriate punishment if the defendant is non-white. The bottom line: The Committee recommends that the governor immediately impose a moratorium on capital punishment in the state until exhaustive studies are conducted that could prove the Committee's findings are in error.

This all came as welcome news to Jeff Garis, founder, leader and organizer of Pennsylvania Abolitionists United Against The Death Penalty.

"It's exactly what we've been saying all along," Garis says. "In some ways, the report doesn't offer anything new. We know black and brown and poor people are far more likely to get the death penalty, and we know that these defendants are too often inadequately represented by counsel. What is new about the report is that these admissions are coming from a Republican Supreme Court. At least they're willing to admit to issues of disparity and unfairness, and that in itself is a tremendous advance."

It's exactly those issues of fairness that have the governor's staff engaged in serious spin control.

"The governor is committed to reviewing the entire system and each individual case," says Rendell spokesperson Kate Philips, "but believes the current system is fair. Not perfect, but fair."

"Governor Rendell understands that the death penalty is the ultimate punishment, and very serious business," Philips contends. "He believes that each capital case should be monitored and reviewed for fairness and equal justice under the law, and that defendants facing the death penalty should have the best possible defense. They should have competent, qualified attorneys and access to DNA testing or other tests that could prove exculpatory. But he doesn't believe that the system is patently unfair to anyone, and therefore a moratorium isn't necessary."

Garis and other death penalty opponents say Rendell's attitude toward the Committee's recommendations is evidence that he's woefully out of touch.

"Rendell seems blissfully unaware of the level of the debate," Garis opines. "He still has the mentality of a district attorney from the '80s. He said all along that he wanted hard evidence of the kinds of allegations that we've been making, and he's got that evidence on his desk in the form of the Supreme Court Committee's report. Well, maybe not on his desk. Probably in the trash can next to his desk."

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) website, there are currently 239 inmates on Pennsylvania's death row, and of those, 24 are Philadelphians put there while Rendell was district attorney. The DOC identifies 21 of the 24 as black.

www.deathpenaltyinfo.org), conclusions of judicial disparity and institutional unfairness paralleling those of the Supreme Court Committee were found in death penalty studies conducted in Maryland, Indiana, New Jersey, North Carolina, Virginia and Kentucky. DPIC concedes that while nearly equal numbers of blacks and whites are executed nationwide, which would tend to bolster Rendell’s claim of essential fairness in the system, further investigation reveals that while whites constitute about half the murder victims, 81 percent of those on death row are there for killing whites, as opposed to 13 percent who got the death sentence for killing blacks. It should also be noted that of the 107 people exonerated from death row nationwide in the past 30 years, four were from Pennsylvania.

"There’s no acceptable margin for error for the death penalty," Garis says angrily. "It’s up to Rendell to prove the infallibility of the system, and at least107 people can prove otherwise."