Pa. high court hears arguments over death penalty

Gov. Wolf calls his moratorium on Pennsylvania executions appropriate while he awaits a task force report about what he says is "a flawed system that has been proven to be . . . ineffective, unjust, and expensive."

District Attorney Seth Williams, county prosecutors, and legislative leaders counter that Wolf's position "usurps judicial review of criminal judgments, and is in direct violation of his duty to faithfully execute Pennsylvania law."

Resolving the debate is now up to the state Supreme Court, which on Thursday heard oral arguments on the constitutional challenge to Wolf's seven-month-old ban on the state's ultimate penalty, which was last used in 1999.

Wolf announced the moratorium Feb. 13, when he also granted a reprieve for Terrance Williams, 49, a former star quarterback for Germantown High School, who was to have been executed March 4 for the 1984 murder of a Germantown church volunteer.

Wolf said he would sign no more death warrants until he gets the report of a legislative task force studying the future of capital punishment in Pennsylvania.

Arguing before the high court's five justices in their City Hall courtroom, Hugh Burns, chief of appeals for the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, decried Wolf's reprieve for Terrance Williams as halting an execution approved by every appeals court.

Burns said Wolf "violated the separation of powers" among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of state government by suspending the death penalty.

State Deputy General Counsel H. Geoffrey Moulton Jr., a former federal prosecutor and law professor representing Wolf, argued that a governor's authority to grant reprieves to condemned inmates has been part of the state constitution since colonial times and has been regularly used.

Moulton told the justices that in 1961, Gov. David L. Lawrence did the same thing: stopped signing death warrants until receiving the report of a state task force.

Wolf has signed two more reprieves for inmates facing execution since Williams' reprieve, Moulton said.

"This governor does not have increased power," Moulton said. "If people are unhappy when this governor issues reprieves, they can either choose another governor or amend the constitution."

The justices held the appeal for further review; the court has no deadline for ruling.

The justices appeared to have different perspectives on the import of Wolf's actions.

Justice Correale F. Stevens seemed open to Burns' argument that Wolf was abusing the reprieve authority.

Stevens noted that the legislative task force on the death penalty, created in 2011 and expected to report in 2013, is still at work after several extensions.

"I wonder whether or not this [moratorium pending the task force report] is creating a policy where the Supreme Court becomes irrelevant," Stevens said.

Burns agreed that Wolf was "certainly exercising judicial powers" by not enforcing a law until a task force report.

Justice J. Michael Eakin suggested that the court may not have a constitutional issue to address and that Wolf muddied the question by calling it a "moratorium" instead of simply issuing a series of reprieves.

"If he had kept his mouth shut and not signed any death warrants, would he have done anything unconstitutional?" Eakin asked Burns.

Burns replied that the state has adopted a "rule of law" by which the governor must consider reprieves on a case-by-case basis, not a blanket suspension of the death penalty.

"It doesn't seem right to me," Burns said.

Both Justice Max Baer and Chief Justice Thomas G. Saylor questioned whether the high court had to do anything, given that the task force and whatever recommendations it makes are not yet reality.

"Isn't this premature?" Baer asked Burns.