HARRISBURG, Pa. – Gov. Josh Shapiro issued his first death penalty reprieve earlier this month, a low-profile decision that fulfills his promise to continue Pennsylvania’s moratorium on executions and reflects a broader political shift as advocates say momentum is slowly building toward abolishing capital punishment.
The reprieve, issued Dec. 5 with little fanfare, maintains the moratorium on executions that began under former Gov. Tom Wolf. Both Wolf and Shapiro have said they would not carry out any death sentences and have urged the Legislature to enact sentencing reform that includes eliminating the death penalty.
Shapiro “is taking the kind of leadership that we expect people with a strong moral compass and a strong understanding of public policy” to be assuming, Robert Dunham, founder of the Death Penalty Policy Project, said at a news briefing this week.
In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision that forced most states to rewrite their death penalty statutes. Pennsylvania re-established capital punishment in 1978, but since then has only executed three people, the most recent in 1999.
According to Patriot-News, the Department of Corrections recorded that “a total of 482 warrants or notices have been issued in Pennsylvania” since 1985. After a jury sentences a person to death, the governor is presented with a warrant setting the date of execution. If the governor does not sign, the secretary of corrections issues a notice of execution.
The article writes that warrants are presented after an execution has been decided by the jury, “setting a date of execution,” and if unsigned they pass on to the secretary of corrections. With the three exceptions since 1978, none of the warrants or notices have resulted in an execution.
In the majority of cases, the death sentence was stayed or overturned by an appeals court. In situations where no further adjudication is expected, governors have issued reprieves to prevent executions. Wolf issued eight reprieves while in office, citing the frequency with which capital sentences were overturned and the permanence of death.
Shapiro had previously supported the death penalty, but upon taking office in 2023 said his views had “evolved” during his time as attorney general and he would continue Wolf’s policy.
In his first reprieve, Shapiro reiterated that message, writing that his time as attorney general “revealed two undeniable truths about our capital sentencing system: that it is inherently fallible and that its consequences are irreversible.”
Although those sentenced to death “have committed the most terrible crimes and deserve to spend the rest of their lives behind bars,” Shapiro wrote, the commonwealth “should not be in the business of executing people.”
The reprieve drew little publicity. A two-sentence notice on the DOC website states that Corrections Secretary Laurel Harry issued an execution notice Dec. 5 for death row prisoner Richard Roland Laird. The DOC’s list shows Shapiro signed a reprieve the same day.
Laird and an accomplice were convicted in the 1987 abduction and killing of Anthony Milano in Bucks County. Prosecutors said Laird hurled homophobic slurs at Milano before kidnapping him and cutting his throat. The hate crime drew national attention and was followed by decades of appeals, with Laird’s case pending for more than 37 years.
While both Wolf and Shapiro have pressed the Legislature to repeal the death penalty, political divisions remain. In 2023, the Judiciary Committee of the Democratic-majority state House advanced a repeal bill, but it never received a full vote. The likelihood of agreement with the GOP-majority Senate remains slim, but the current version includes increased Republican support.
The issue remains a political flashpoint nationwide. Dunham and others noted declining death sentences, but a rise in executions driven largely by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
According to Patriot-News, “In Pennsylvania, Washington County District Attorney Jason Walsh is also facing a lawsuit arguing that he has pursued the death penalty in an unusually large number of cases for political reasons.” Plaintiffs allege Walsh pressured the county coroner to declare a child’s death a homicide because “I need to win an election” by seeking the death penalty. Walsh disputes the characterization.
“This is the kind of misconduct that leads to increasing public distrust for capital punishment, and I think that it will continue the national trend that we’re seeing away from support for the death penalty,” Dunham said.
Gallup polling earlier this year showed 52% of Americans support allowing the death penalty for murder cases, down from a peak of 80% in 1994.
A Susquehanna Polling & Research survey commissioned by the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation and Pennsylvanians Against the Death Penalty shows 29% of respondents prefer capital punishment to a life sentence, compared with 42% in 2015. “The survey also revealed that 66% of Democrats and 49% of Republicans believed the government could not be trusted to apply the death penalty fairly,” Patriot-News reported.
A review by the Death Penalty Information Center found that between 1978 and 2018, 170 Pennsylvania death row prisoners had their sentences or convictions overturned. Of those, 137 cases were retried or re-sentenced, and 133 resulted in downgraded sentences or full exonerations.
In response to the abuse of power in death penalty cases like Walsh’s, the article emphasizes that “Even after a sentence or conviction is overturned, ‘the trauma remains,’ said Akin Adepoju, a board member of Pennsylvanians Against the Death Penalty.”
Adepoju continued by urging how these individuals’ lives are forever changed and they can no longer return to their old lives. “Jobs are lost, opportunities are gone, relationships are strained, trust is broken. And that is the sort of real, lasting legacy of the death penalty for everyone from the jurors to the individuals who are really living through it.”
Patriot-News concludes that in his first reprieve, Shapiro reaffirmed the core message of his shift: the system is fallible and the consequences irreversible.
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