Little regard for justice

May 18, 2008 05:43 am

— Snyder County district attorney Michael Sholley announced recently that he plans to seek the death penalty if Travis Stock is convicted of killing Jeffrey Graham. Stock would become the third Valley man moved to Death Row since the turn of the millennium if that were to occur.
It should not -- though that has little to do with the merits of the case against Stock.
Pennsylvania's use of the death penalty should cease until the Commonwealth develops a more equitable manner of implementing the ultimate punishment.
Valley cases illustrate the uneven manner in which the ultimate penalty is handed down. Twelve killers have been charged with murder locally since 2001, but only four times have jurors been asked to decide whether a defendant should live or die.
One jury was willing to authorize capital punishment.
It would be one matter if this occurred, because the worst penalty is reserved for the worst crimes, but other factors seem to be at play.
It may be easier for prosecutors to convince jurors to hand down a death sentence in urban areas where jurors may feel comfortably anonymous or outraged by rising homicide rates. Rural jurors may feel less at ease delivering a death sentence when so many neighbors will know they played a role in the morally-ambiguous exercise.
More often than not, jurors are not asked to decide. Prosecutors can hardly be blamed for working out deals with killers when faced with the prospect of going through a costly trial only to see a conviction lead to a sentence of life-without-parole.
Some might call this judicial economy -- a move to save taxpayers the cost of expensive criminal trials by using the threat of capital punishment to frighten killers into admitting guilt.
Practical benefits aside, such deals allow killers to avoid the death penalty by conceding guilt. It also raises the question: What is the value of a process that imperils an accused person for maintaining his or her innocence?
The decision about whether or not a defendant lives or dies is often based on the political landscape as viewed by the elected district attorney. Justice gets left out of the equation.