Death penalty in Pa. looks like a toothless guard dog

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: An empty threat might seem like a good middle ground.

It could give all the weight of a hefty penalty without any of the responsibility for the follow-through. It could seem strong while not actually being prepared to show strength.

The reality is that it is a frustrated mother telling her kids she will turn this car right around even when she knows she can’t.

That is the death penalty.

In Pennsylvania, capital punishment is a toothless guard dog that runs around the yard barking and growling, but only as far as its leash will stretch. That dog has been chained to the porch for a long time, and everyone knows it.

Since 1985, there have been eight governors. Together they or their administrators signed 467 death warrants — many of them repeats for offenders who were stayed and stayed and stayed.

In 34 years, only three executions occurred. Two happened in 1995. The last was in 1999. All were authorized by Gov. Tom Ridge, who signed 220 warrants in less than eight years.

But in 20 years, there has been no further activity. Gov. Tom Wolf instituted a moratorium in 2015 and will not sign warrants himself, delegating that responsibility to Secretary of Corrections John Wetzel.

DEMANDS OF DEATH PENALTY

So why do we still pursue the death penalty? It demands more of our juries. It ties up our courts and eats up resources while the condemned inmate grows old in a cage that costs more per year than other jail cells because of death-row policies.

This is not a moral judgment about execution. There are good reasons to be for it or against it. There are moral arguments, not to mention theological, sociological, political and legal ones.

But what is the good reason to continue feeding fuel into a machine we have not used in 20 years?

A study on the effectiveness of the death penalty in Pennsylvania was delivered last year, but the moratorium stands until the Legislature takes some action.

We could wait for someone else to figure it out, but since the federal government has only used the death penalty three times since 1988, that doesn’t seem likely.

So that just leaves the legislators to decide whether Pennsylvania is a death- penalty state or not, or if we continue to occupy the weird middle ground of empty threats and toothless dogs.