Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro wants our state lawmakers to get rid of the death penalty.

Some might be surprised that we still have a death penalty on the books since there has not been an execution in Pennsylvania in nearly 24 years.

Last week, Shapiro urged the General Assembly to work with him to abolish the death penalty “once and for all.”

In the meantime, he said, he would continue the moratorium imposed by his predecessor Tom Wolf. Both Shapiro and Wolf are Democrats.

Shapiro served notice that he will not sign any execution warrants while governor. He also admitted that his steadfast opposition to the death penalty is a change of position since at one time he did support use of the death penalty but only for what he called the “most heinous of crimes.”

I agreed with Shapiro’s former position; I don’t agree with a total ban. There are some cases that are so horrible, so heinous and committed by people who are the personification of evil, who should have to pay for their unspeakable crimes with their lives.

I am happy that state Rep. Doyle Heffley, R-Carbon, agrees with my view that the victims of crimes so violent need justice and that goes for their families, too. In these instances the “death penalty is warranted,” Heffley said.

Shapiro said his change of heart is on moral grounds. He added that he is concerned that such a system is fallible and “irreversible.” While this point of view may have been valid in decades past, modern investigatory tools make these instances really rare.

Shapiro also said the state should not be in the business of putting people to death. He cited several examples where the survivors of victims of brutal killings asked that the offenders be spared the death penalty.

There are more than 100 inmates on death row, all of them housed at the State Correctional Institution at Collegeville in Montgomery County. The state once used the electric chair, housed at Bellefonte in Centre County, but that is long gone. More recent executions were done by lethal injection. Unfortunately, there have been a number of missteps which led to instances where the accused was not put to death immediately because of issues with the contents of the medication used.

The American Civil Liberties Union praised Shapiro’s stance, calling the death penalty an “archaic, broken policy from a bygone era.” Many equate putting a defendant convicted of first-degree murder with aggravating factors to death similar to the Biblical injunction of “an eye for an eye.”

One of those whom I put into the pure evil category and who is on death row is Eric Frein of Canadensis, Monroe County, found guilty of the 2014 murder of a Pennsylvania State Police officer in Pike County and who was scheduled to be executed in June 2020. Because of Wolf’s moratorium, the execution was not carried out and remains on hold indefinitely. Because of Shapiro’s position, Frein will remain on death row at least until 2027, probably much longer.

Another that I would put into this pure evil category is the killer of four University of Idaho students last year. Monroe County native Bryan Kohberger, 28, who was arrested at the home of his parents in the Indian Mountain Lake development in Chestnuthill Township, Monroe County, is charged with these murders. If convicted, he could face the death penalty, which is still allowed in Idaho through lethal injection. A bill has just been introduced into the Idaho legislature that would approve firing squad executions as backups.

When he became governor in 2015, Wolf commissioned a Joint State Government Commission to study the issue of the death penalty. The commission returned its 270-page report citing inadequacies in the system. Wolf said he would not relent until the inadequacies are addressed.

The commission, made up of four senators - two from each party - and 25 advisory members, did not recommend abolishing the death penalty, a disappointment to many anti-death penalty groups. The task force also recommended making the state’s lethal injection protocol public and that an appropriate and effective drug be used to execute the guilty criminals humanely.

Other recommendations included:

• Set up a publicly funded agency to give representation to defendants in capital crime cases.

• Adopt “guilty but mentally ill” as a degree of guilt.

• Follow the lead of other states that collect data to determine whether death sentences are used in an unfair, arbitrary or discriminatory way.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.