The Washington Post

Friday, February 11, 2000

Philadelphia City Council Backs Halt of Executions

By William Claiborne

CHICAGO, Feb. 10-On the heels of a decision by Illinois Gov. George H. Ryan (R) to halt all executions until the fairness of capital punishment procedures are studied, Philadelphia's City Council today adopted a resolution urging the Pennsylvania legislature to enact a similar moratorium on executing death row inmates.

The council's 12-4 vote makes Philadelphia the eighth--and largest--municipality to urge a halt to executions as part of an anti-death penalty movement that has inspired moratorium legislation in six of the 38 states that have capital punishment. Besides Pennsylvania, death penalty moratoriums are under consideration by legislatures in Maryland, Alabama, New Jersey, Washington state and Oklahoma.

Philadelphia County has sentenced 125 of the 226 people on death row in Pennsylvania, ranking it third in the number of condemned prisoners behind Los Angeles County (156) and Harris County, Tex., (140), which includes Houston.

Tony Banout, co-director of the Hyattsville-based Quixote Center, said the Philadelphia council vote "sends a clear message to the state legislature to halt executions until it can be determined if they are being applied fairly."

The nonprofit Quixote Center runs a Moratorium Now project that Banout said has enlisted 700 groups nationally to urge a halt to executions, citing race and class bias and the risk of executing innocent people.

Banout noted that the innocence of condemned prisoners has been the most publicized element of Ryan's decision to halt executions in Illinois, where 13 death row inmates have been cleared of murder charges since capital punishment was reinstated in 1977, compared to 12 who were put to death.

"But nationally, innocence is only one factor, while race and poverty are very major factors," said Banout. He said that more than two-thirds of Pennsylvania's death row inmates are people of color, and more than 90 percent were too poor to afford their own attorney.

The Quixote Center said that besides Philadelphia, municipalities that have recently urged death penalty moratoriums include Charlottesville; Mount Rainier; New Haven, Conn.; and Chapel Hill, Durham, Carrboro and Orange County, all in North Carolina.

Meanwhile, a senior Justice Department official said today he has been ordered by Attorney General Janet Reno to study whether inappropriate racial disparities exist in the federal death penalty system.

Deputy Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that the study was ordered "out of an abundance of caution" and was not necessarily based on a belief that a disparity exists in the system.

"We want to make sure that the system is as fair as it can be, and we are always looking for ways to improve the system," Holder told reporters at the Justice Department. He said the review began several months ago without an announcement.

Of the 21 people awaiting execution in a federal death row prison in Terre Haute, Ind., 14 are black, a ratio that has prompted questions about whether the federal death penalty unfairly discriminates against blacks.