By Ben Borghi
CARLISLE, Pa. — A recent plea deal in a 2021 homicide case is raising renewed questions about whether prosecutors use the threat of the death penalty as a strategic bargaining tool rather than a narrowly tailored pursuit of justice.
According to a PennLive Patriot-News article published last week, Cumberland County District Attorney Sean McCormack resolved the killing of Kendall Jerome Cook through a plea agreement. Michael Anthony Baltimore, Jr., was sentenced to 15 to 30 years in prison for third-degree murder, as well as additional consecutive time for a separate firearms theft case.
The controversy, as described by the Patriot-News, arose when the commonwealth reportedly filed notice of its intent to seek the death penalty.
As the article notes, “When the government can credibly threaten death, it gains leverage unlike anything else in the criminal-legal system.”
The fear of receiving the death penalty significantly shapes how the defense evaluates a case. It states that it fundamentally “changes how defendants assess risk, how families weigh outcomes, how lawyers advise clients, and how justice is negotiated.”
Jim Moreno, the author of the article, , raises an important question: If a case ultimately resolves in a noncapital sentence, why was death on the table at all? In practice, he contends, a capital charge can become less about pursuing “the worst of the worst” and more about securing a strategic advantage in negotiations.
Moreno highlights how the stakes are exponentially raised in a death penalty case, including the process of jury selection.
He notes, “To seat a ‘death-qualified’ jury, courts exclude prospective jurors who could not vote for execution, even if those jurors could fairly decide guilt,” adding that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the practice.
However, Moreno adds, “the American Psychological Association and decades of research have warned that death-qualified juries skew more prosecution-prone and less representative than ordinary criminal juries.” Studies have found that the psychology of a juror is more likely to include a predisposed negative view of the accused when involved in a death penalty case, according to that research.
In the Patriot-News article, Moreno questions the overall motive of the prosecution. He asks, “When a prosecutor files a death notice in a case that later resolves with a non-capital sentence, especially one like third-degree murder, the public is entitled to ask: was this truly a principled decision to pursue the ultimate punishment, or was it an effort to gain maximum leverage from the start?”
Moreno also argues that this leverage extends beyond the jury box. Under the Pennsylvania Constitution, bail may be denied in capital cases when “the proof is evident or presumption great.”
As Moreno writes, a death notice can effectively keep someone jailed for years before trial, even before guilt has been established. In that view, capital charging becomes not merely a punishment tool, but a pretrial pressure mechanism.
Moreno states that capital charges are meant to reflect “the narrowest and most careful exercise of state power.” He points to an example from Washington County to support his argument.
Two men, Jordan Clarke and Joshua George, who were facing capital prosecution, asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to rein in Washington County District Attorney Jason Walsh, alleging a pattern of using death penalty notices improperly and coercively.
Although Walsh denied the allegations, Moreno describes the case as particularly striking. As he writes of George’s case, “he was held for years and faced the possibility of death. And then a jury acquitted him in October after deliberating for less than 90 minutes.”
Moreno acknowledges that a plea deal alone does not prove misconduct. In Baltimore’s case, the District Attorney’s Office cited evidentiary obstacles, including the death of a witness.
But the broader concern remains. If the death penalty is meant to be reserved for the most aggravated, carefully supported cases, then its use as negotiation leverage risks undermining both fairness and public trust.
Moreno concludes that Pennsylvania does not need more death notices, but “more integrity.”
The ultimate punishment, he argues, should reflect evidence and law, not strategy or politics.
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