By Naomi Creason
The Sentinel
CARLISLE, Pa. — Cumberland County Chief Public Defender Tim Clawges would love nothing more than to see the abolishment of the death penalty.
Serving as a public defender for almost 25 years, Clawges has first-hand experience talking to defendants facing death row and researching their histories of potential abuse, drugs and mental illness. Clawges said that even criminals in the most serious cases “have some real humanity. Everybody’s got some good parts to them.”
It’s the bad parts, however, that is the concern of Cumberland County District Attorney David Freed.
Freed emphasized that he and his office put serious consideration into whether they should pursue a death penalty case. While those cases must prove to have “aggravating circumstances,” he said his office goes beyond that to consider how much evidence is against the defender.
“I feel in the cases we’ve (prosecuted), there’s been no question of guilt or if they were appropriately handled,” he said.
The argument for some boils down to whether the death penalty is a deterrent to crime, and some officials say there is no data that points to that being the case.
“It’s nothing but vengeance,” Clawges said of capital cases.
Deterrent
Among the arguments of a broken system and taxpayer burden, some say the death penalty simply does not deter people from killing others.
Both Clawges and private defense attorney Jay Abom of Carlisle said the death penalty is not something that comes up in the process of a crime.
“I don’t think a (defendant) is necessarily thinking about consequences while engaging in that activity,” Abom said.
Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said there are medical factors as to why criminals don’t process their crimes with reasoning of consequences.
A former federal defender, Dunham said that the majority of those convicted and sentenced to death are in their mid- to late 20s. He said medical research indicates that people younger than 25 are still at a stage of life where their frontal lobe — the part that registers consequences — is still developing and maturing.
“The part of the brain that would be responsive to deterrents is not developed. If that’s the case, we can’t expect that (the death penalty) would be a deterrent,” he said.
A study released Feb. 12 from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law addressed reduction of crime and took a closer look at how the death penalty or longer incarceration in general affected crime rates across the country.
The report found that increased incarceration had a limited effect on reducing crime for the last two decades. The report estimates it had somewhere between 0 to 10 percent effect on reducing crime from 1990 to 2000, but almost zero effect on crime since then.
“They found there is no evidence at all that shows the death penalty has an effect on crime levels,” Dunham said. “Crime rates rose in approximately the same rate in the states that had the death penalty and in the states that didn’t. Crime levels fell in approximately the same rate in the states that had the death penalty and in the states that didn’t. Homicide rates were generally lower in states that did not have the death penalty.”
The report argued that factors that did prove successful in crime reduction were increasing numbers of police officers, changes in income, decreased alcohol consumption and more use of data-driven policing techniques.
Prison life
Some may argue that a death sentence might not be a deterrent to criminals, but the bleak picture of what is in store for death row inmates can make a difference in whether a defendant wants to take a plea deal.
Pennsylvania Department of Corrections spokeswoman Susan McNaughton said that Pennsylvania’s death row inmates are housed in three facilities — State Correctional Institution Greene and SCI Graterford for men, and SCI Muncy for women. She noted that all men regardless of their sentence enter the corrections department through SCI Camp Hill. So, there are times where SCI Camp Hill might house a death row inmate. According to the department’s records, SCI Camp Hill is the temporary home of Raghunandan Yandamuri, 29, who was sentenced in Montgomery County in November for the death of a 10-month-old girl and her grandmother.
In the state Department of Correction’s monthly population report, which included data as of Feb. 28, there were 186 death row inmates and 5,353 inmates serving life sentences. The total prison population in the system was 49,019.
McNaughton said the department will place male capital case inmates in Greene or Graterford depending on bed space availability, which she said is not an issue for its death row population. That inmate most likely will spend the rest of his life at that facility unless he needs to be moved because of court appearances or because he is problematic for the facility. SCI Rockview is the state prison where inmates are executed.
Amenities are limited to those on death row. McNaughton said death row inmates are provided services from counselors, religious staff, barbers and health care providers, and food is served to them in their cells, as opposed to being eaten in the inmate dining hall. Capital case inmates may also purchase items from the prison’s commissary, though those orders are more limited than the other prisoners’ options because of security levels.
McNaughton said the inmates on death row will spend most of their time in their cells.
“Capital case inmates are housed in capital case units with other capital case inmates,” she said in an email. “They are locked in their cells 22 hours a day. They are permitted out of their cells for exercise or out-of-cell use of the unit law library, visits, etc. Each time a capital case inmate is out of his/her cell, at least two officers escorts them, and they are handcuffed and shackled.”
As a comparison, McNaughton said prisoners serving life sentences are housed among the general population throughout all of the prisons in the state system. They have the ability to work, attend classes, participate in programs and have contact visits just like all of the other inmates.
That kind of outlook may change what defendants do before they get to their county trials.
“I speak to clients about what life would be like,” Abom said. “They say, ‘Well, I’ll die in prison anyway.’ But I’ll talk about quality of life. Ultimately that is the choice of the defendant and not ours.”
For those who go through with the trial and end up on death row, the price McNaughton mentioned for extra security does mean a slightly costlier price tag for taxpayers. Because of the need for additional staff, McNaughton said a capital case inmate costs about $47,000 per year to house — about $10,000 more than an inmate in the general population.