Let’s Pay Attention
April 22nd, 2016
Tuesday is a pretty big day for Democrats in Pennsylvania: Hillary or Bernie? Sestak or McGinty or the very cool but lesser known John Fetterman? And, of course, that critical race for Attorney General. Wait, you don’t know about that critical race for Attorney General? Allow us to provide you a little information.
ACCR doesn’t endorse candidates (honestly, do you think we need more enemies than we already have?). We do, however, believe that voters should be informed consumers when entering the booth. And since Kathleen Kane has decided to end her biblical reign (in terms of calamitous, not miraculous, events), this election is particularly important in reestablishing a sense of legal dignity in our state. Here are a few facts about the three running in the Democratic primary, Stephen Zappala, John Morganelli, and Josh Shapiro.
Zappala is the long time District Attorney of Pittsburgh and the son of a former Chief Justice of Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court. When asked his opinion about the death penalty, he bravely noted that it must be applied “in a thoughtful way.” And, in truth, for most of Mr. Zappala’s tenure as District Attorney, his office sought capital punishment more selectively than the rest of the state, and far less than Philadelphia. But then the worst thing that can happen to a prosecutor happened to Mr. Zappala – he got ambitious. In the years leading up to his decision to run for Attorney General, Pittsburgh has seen a huge uptick in death penalty prosecutions, while the rest of the country has moved in the opposite direction. Would Mr. Zappala be the first politician trying to climb higher on the backs of poor people accused of serious crimes? Hardly.
Then there is Mr. Morganelli. Of the three candidates, he is the only actual trial prosecutor; and in fact he has personally put a number of men on death row. He is a staunch believer in the death penalty, but he has a casual relationship with the truth when he discusses this issue. “We have federal judges who constantly block these executions. It has nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of the defendant. It is because the federal judges are philosophically opposed to the death penalty,” Morganelli said. The reality, of course, is that Pennsylvania state judges have granted relief in far more capital cases than Pennsylvania federal judges. While the possibility of executing an innocent person weighs heavily on even most pro-death penalty advocates, Mr. Morganelli is the exception: “Death row right now, there’s absolutely no evidence at all that these people are innocent, in fact they’re all guilty, we know that,” he said in a televised debate with the Director of ACCR. At least he is not struggling with his conscience.
Finally, there is Josh Shapiro. A Montgomery County commissioner and chairman of the state’s Commission on Crime and Delinquency, he has no background as a prosecutor. While he does support the death penalty for “the most heinous of crimes,” he believes the current system is broken and needs to be fixed. Mr. Shapiro sees the problems with capital punishment as part of a larger discussion on criminal justice reform; unlike Mr. Morganelli, who has criticized the ongoing state study as a maneuvering tactic by abolitionists, Mr. Shapiro anxiously awaits the results of the study and believes it will provide insight into possible remedies.
For those of us who have been doing criminal justice work for a while, recommending a vote for a prosecutor, a judge, or an attorney general is always fraught with the possibility of disappointment. Nonetheless, we should at least know what a person’s track record is before we pull a lever. Hopefully this has helped. But, as always, let the buyer beware.