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​PACDL Issues Statement About Death Penalty Study

The Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (PACDL) released the following statement from Bradley A. Winnick, PACDL President in response to the Joint State Government Commission’s Report on Capital Punishment in Pennsylvania: The Report of the Task Force and Advisory Committee.

“PACDL has long opposed the penalty of death as a criminal sanction.  Every significant study of Pennsylvania’s capital punishment system has concluded that it is severely flawed, unreliable, and arbitrarily administered.  The report released today by the Joint State Government Commission reiterates that Pennsylvania’s procedural system remains deficient.  Its findings that Pennsylvania’s system does not halt the execution of innocent persons and that Pennsylvania’s clemency process fails as a safety net to address factual and procedural errors are sufficient to categorically reject the death penalty and recognize that Pennsylvania’s death penalty impedes equal justice under law, both actual and apparent, in criminal proceedings.

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PACDL Submits Amicus Briefs in Bell and in Lacaze

​​PACDL with the Defender Association of Philadelphia filed an amicus curiae brief in the case of Commonwealth v. Bell, (11 MAP 2018) on June 13 before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.  Additionally, PACDL along with NACDL and 32 other associations of criminal defense lawyers filed a brief of amici curiae before the United States Supreme Court (No. 17-1566) asking the Court to grant certiorari to resolve the appropriate test for determining whether a criminal defendant has been denied his right to an impartial jury.