The Death Penalty Inherently Risks Executing Innocent People. Pennsylvania has already done it.
History shows the state cannot be trusted with the power to kill
The greatest fear in a rational system of justice that authorizes capital punishment is that innocent people will be sentenced to death and may be executed. That risk is inherent wherever the death penalty is employed and is a historical reality in Pennsylvania.
While the Pennsylvania House of Representatives continued to mull how to address HB 888, a bipartisan proposal to prospectively abolish the state’s death penalty law, the Death Penalty Policy Project surveyed the historical literature to assess the frequency of wrongful capital convictions and executions in the Commonwealth. DP3 found at least five instances in which the state executed innocent defendants and more than two dozen other cases in which innocent defendants were who were wrongfully convicted and condemned were either exonerated or died in prison.
DP3 found that the wrongful executions were not mere errors. They were a combination of bias and political convenience, with striking similarities to the current political landscape. Here are a few stories of those wrongful state killings.
From 1877 through 1879, Pennsylvania hanged twenty men alleged to be members of the Molly Maguires in trials later described as “a surrender of state sovereignty.”1 The Reading Railroad initiated an investigation of Irish Catholic mine workers in Northeastern Pennsylvania through the notorious Pinkerton Detective Agency and had a private police force arrest the defendants. Private lawyers from the coal industry acted as prosecutors in the cases. Alleged Molly Maguire leader John “Black Jack” Kehoe was hanged for the murder of mine boss, F. W. Langdon more than a decade earlier, despite the absence of any evidence connecting Kehoe — who proclaimed his innocence — to the crime. In 1979, Governor Milton Shapp posthumously pardoned Kehoe.
Four of the wrongful executions in Pennsylvania followed a trajectory well known in the annals of lynching: Black men wrongfully accused of murdering white women.
On December 16, 1920, Annie Mary Kirker, a white woman who lived in an affluent section of Mifflin Township, near Pittsburgh, was murdered in her home. Two months later, the case remained unsolved. Then, responding to calls that a black man had been seen lurking in another affluent white community, police shot and apprehended a 39-year old black man named Joseph Thomas. Mr. Thomas lived in a room in a factory in Wilmerding, Pennsylvania. Police conducted a search of his room and purportedly found items that were said to have been missing from the Kirker home, as well as newspapers describing the crime.2
Mr. Thomas was vilified in the media as an “Ape Man,” with the racist epithet appearing in numerous headlines and news stories. Decades later, a reinvestigation of the case by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette presented evidence that Mrs. Kirker’s husband had committed the murder and staged the crime scene and that police had planted the evidence supposedly “found” in Mr. Thomas’s room.
Just ten months after Joe Thomas was executed, on October 6, 1923, a young white Pittsburgh woman named Elsie Barthel, who was engaged to be married, was murdered. Ms. Barthel was pregnant, but by a man other than her fiancé. A young Black man named Lorenzo Savage was targeted as the suspect, wrongfully convicted and condemned, and executed.3
Ms. Barthel was looking for a way to break off her engagement and marry the man who had impregnated her. She hired Mr. Savage to provide her a tarot reading to guide her in that endeavor. After the card reading, Mr. Savage hailed a cab for a ride to another appointment. By “coincidence,” the driver who happened to be on the scene to pick him up was Ms. Barthel’s fiancé, Walter Haule.
Police never treated Mr. Haule as a suspect in the murder. Instead, they focused on Mr. Savage. The Pittsburgh police department was notorious at the time for violent interrogations, and the lead detective in the case — who had previously been accused but formally cleared of abusing a suspect during an interrogation — was known for giving suspects “the third degree.” After ten hours of continuous interrogation, police extracted a confession from Mr. Savage. That confession was the only evidence that he was involved in the murder.
Shortly after his arrest, and continuously as the trial approached, banner headlines salaciously, racistly, and falsely depicted Mr. Savage as a “NEGRO VOODOO DOCTOR.” His trial was scheduled to begin on November 18, less than a month-and-a-half after the murder. One week before trial, counsel was appointed to defend Mr. Savage. Mr. Savage was swiftly convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed on March 31, 1924.
In 1931, a 16-year-old African American boy, Alexander McClay Williams, was wrongfully executed in Delaware County for the murder of Vida Robare, a white school matron at a juvenile facility to which he had been committed. Ms. Robare had been stabbed 47 times with an ice pick and sustained two broken ribs and a fractured skull during the attack. Shortly before the murder, she had obtained a divorce from her abusive ex-husband on the grounds of “extreme cruelty.” Yet police never investigated him as a possible suspect.
Although bloody handprints were discovered at the scene and it would have been impossible for the attacker not to have been covered in blood, Mr. Williams had no blood on him. Law enforcement sent the prints to an expert for examination, but the results of the testing were never presented at trial and were withheld from the defense. Mr. Williams had been performing chores at the facility that made it impossible for him to have been at the crime scene when the murder occurred. Nevertheless, after hours of interrogation during which police beat Mr. Williams badly enough that photographs showed him with a black eye, the teen “confessed.” However, the version of events depicted in the confession did not match the physical evidence of how the murder actually occurred. When Mr. Williams was sentenced to death, he desperately shouted to the court that he had been promised he wouldn’t be executed if he confessed.4
In 1942, yet another young black man was wrongfully convicted and executed in Pittsburgh for the murder of yet another white woman. William Kennie Wilson, a homeless, intellectually disabled 20-year-old migrant from Alabama, falsely confessed to police that he had killed Rose Haber, a 35-year old drug store clerk who had been clubbed in the head “with a heavy weapon” during a purse snatching. Eyewitnesses had reported that Ms. Haber had been attacked by a white man. Mr. Wilson confessed after three days in custody, but his “confession” reportedly “baffled” and “puzzled” the investigating officers because it bore little resemblance to the reality of how the murder occurred. Prosecutors tried Mr. Wilson nonetheless, leading to his wrongful conviction and execution.5
These wrongful executions, however, are just the leading edge of wrongful capital convictions in Pennsylvania. Historians and researchers have identified at least twelve other cases predating Pennsylvania’s reintroduction of the death penalty in 1974 in which Pennsylvania juries or judges wrongfully condemned innocent men to death.6 In most instances, the men who were wrongfully condemned were members of disfavored racial or immigrant groups.
Among them, three Hungarian immigrants, Andrew Toth, Michael Sabol, and George Rusnok, were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for a killing during a labor riot on January 1, 1891 precipitated by management’s demand that the steelworkers operate the foundry on New Year’s Day.7 In June 2023, a jury convicted and sentenced Italian coalminer Daniel Rastelli to die for the fatal robbery of a Pittsburgh Coal Company payroll officer, despite corroboration by a company foreman, co-workers, and company records that he was at work at the time of the robbery.8 In December 1927, Italian immigrants Vincenzo Ciccia and Oreste Delforte were capitally tried for a murder in Hazelwood that was linked to Prohibition-era bootlegging. Although multiple witnesses testified that the men were more than ten miles away at the time of the murder, the jury voted to convict and sentenced them to death.9
Moreover, wrongful capital convictions are not just a relic of Pennsylvania’s past. Fourteen more people who were sentenced to death since the commonwealth resumed capital punishment in the 1970s have either been formally exonerated10 or had a civil jury determine they were wrongfully convicted.11 Another innocent death row prisoner died of cancer shackled to a hospital bed while Philadelphia prosecutors appealed a court judgment that there was “no way” a jury that learned of the police corruption, perjury, and financial assistance to prosecution witnesses would “not find a reasonable doubt in [his] case.”12 Still others with strong claims of innocence whose convictions had been overturned in the courts have agreed to no-contest pleas or pleaded guilty to lesser charges to secure their freedom.13
In the co-sponsorship memorandum Representative Diamond circulated in advance of introducing HB 888, he wrote, “The irreversible nature of the death penalty magnifies its tragic consequences.”14 If anything, that is an understatement.
Pennsylvania has already attempted 15 times to execute the wrongfully convicted exonerees who were sentenced to die under the Commonwealth’s existing death-penalty statute. Walter Ogrod, Samuel Randolph, Noel Montalvo, and Kareem Johnson all faced one death warrant; Harold Wilson and Christopher Williams both had two; Daniel Gwynn survived three death warrants; and Roderick Johnson was scheduled to die four separate times.15 The state attempted five other times to execute the likely innocent men who later died in custody: Daniel Dougherty was subjected to one death warrant; Ronald Puksar and Frederick Thomas each survived two warrants.16 Fortunately, all of those scheduled executions were stayed.
All of Pennsylvania’s capital case exonerations have involved some form of official misconduct, false testimony, or both. If these miscarriages of justice were merely mistakes, they are mistakes so frequent and so dangerous that they expose the death penalty as a law too unreliable and too fallible to remain on the books. And if, as the evidence suggests, these wrongful convictions were not accidental and if, therefore, we cannot trust police and prosecutors to be honest all the time, then the power to kill in the name of the law is not a power the law should bestow upon the government of Pennsylvania.
Judge John P. Lavelle, The Hard Coal Docket: 150 Years of the Bench & Bar of Carbon County (1843–1993) (Times News publishers, 1994).
Bill Lofquist, Joseph Thomas in State Killings in the Steel City: The History of the Death Penalty in Pittsburgh; The Notorious Trial of Joe Thomas, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Bill Lofquist and Jody DiPerna, One hundred years ago today, a Pittsburgh man was executed. He was likely innocent., Belt Magazine (April 4, 2024); Bill Lofquist, Lorenzo Johnny Savage in State Killings in the Steel City: The History of the Death Penalty in Pittsburgh.
James Bikales, After 91 years, Black teen exonerated by defense lawyer’s great-grandson, Washington Post, June 18, 2022; Alisha Ebrahimji, A Black teen was wrongfully executed for murdering a White woman in 1931. Now, his family is suing to defend his name, CNN, May 6, 2024; see Alyana Gomez, Delaware County Judge Vacates Murder Charge for Teen Executed in 1931, 6ABC, Philadelphia, June 13, 2022; David Chang, Charges Dismissed for Black Teen Who Was Executed 91 Years Ago., NBC-10, Philadelphia, June 13, 2022; Alex Rose, 16-year-old exonerated of murder after 91 years, Delaware County Times, June 14, 2022.
Bill Lofquist, William Kenney Wilson, in State Killings in the Steel City: The History of the Death Penalty in Pittsburgh.
They include: Monroe Stewart (wrongfully convicted in Allegheny County in 1857); Alexander Killen (Allegheny County, 1890); immigrant steelworkers Andrew Toth, George Rusnok, and Michael Sabol (Allegheny County, 1891); Samuel Greason (Berks County, 1901); mineworker Daniel Rastelli (Allegheny, 1923); Albert Carelli (Allegheny, 1924); Italian immigrants Vincenzo Ciccia and Oreste Delforte (Allegheny, 1927); George Bilger (Philadelphia, 1938); Aaron Turner (Philadelphia, 1946); See National Registry of Exonerations, Exonerations Before 1989 (filtered for Pennsylvania and death penalty); Bill Lofquist, Wrongful Convictions, in State Killings in the Steel City: The History of the Death Penalty in Pittsburgh.
Bill Lofquist, Andrew Toth, Michael Sabol, and George Rusnok, in State Killings in the Steel City: The History of the Death Penalty in Pittsburgh.
Bill Lofquist, Daniel Rastelli, in State Killings in the Steel City: The History of the Death Penalty in Pittsburgh.
Bill Lofquist, Vincenzo Ciccia and Oreste Delforte, in State Killings in the Steel City: The History of the Death Penalty in Pittsburgh.
They are: Neal Ferber, Daniel Gwynn, Kareem Johnson, William Nieves, Walter Ogrod, Christopher Williams, and Harold Wilson, all wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in Philadelphia; Samuel Randolph IV and Jay Smith, Dauphin; Roderick Johnson (Berks); Nicholas Yarris (Delaware); Thomas Kimbell (Lawrence); and Noel Montalvo (York). Death Penalty Information Center, Innocence Database (filtered for Pennsylvania); National Registry of Exonerations, Exonerations Since 1989 (filtered for Pennsylvania and death penalty); National Registry of Exonerations, Exonerations Before 1989 (filtered for Pennsylvania and death penalty).
James Dennis (Philadelphia). Ellie Rushing, Jury awards $16 million to a Philly man whose death-row murder conviction was overturned, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 26, 2024.
Frederick Thomas (Philadelphia). Commonwealth v. Thomas, Feb. Term, 1994, Nos. 991-992, bench order (Phila. C.P. May 31, 2002); Robert Dunham, Pennsylvania Capital Case Summary of Grounds for Reversal (Philadelphia), Death Penalty Information Center, July 30, 2015. Two other former death-row prisoners, Daniel Dougherty (Philadelphia) and Ronald Puksar (Berks), were wrongfully convicted based upon junk forensic testimony but died in prison before their appeals could be finally adjudicated.
E.g., Death Row to Freedom: Dennis Counterman released after plea agreement in children’s deaths, The Morning Call, October 19, 2006 (Dennis Counterman, Lehigh County wrongful capital conviction); Meredith Willse, Unhoused in York: Wrongfully convicted, Ernie saw life through rose-colored glasses, York Dispatch, December 28, 2022 (Ernest Simmons, Cambria County wrongful capital conviction); James Halpin, Man once convicted for 1982 murder to go free, Philadelphia Tribune, December 27, 2016 (Tyrone Moore, Luzerne County wrongful conviction); Moore v. Secretary, Pa. Dept. of Corrections, No. 14-4042 (3d Cir. Feb. 22, 2016) (counsel ineffective for failing to impeach star prosecution witness concerning favorable deal for implicating Moore as the shooter and failing to interview a second co-defendant who would have testified that Moore had not been present and was not involved in the robbery-murder); Kelvin Morris.
Rep. Russ Diamond, Abolishing the Death Penalty: Co-Sponsorship Memorandum for House Bill 888, Pennsylvania House of Representatives, January 16, 2025.
Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, Execution Warrants/Notices Issued by Governor (1985 to Present). The total is 17 if you include the two death warrants directed at James Dennis, who a federal civil jury has found was wrongfully convicted.
Id.