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BY SARA KELLY | Ask most Americans about capital punishment and -- if the conversation goes anywhere at all -- you're likely to hear about the hype surrounding the Texas death machine, where 50 men and women have been executed since the beginning of 1997. Or about Florida, where a well-worn electric chair nicknamed Old Sparky made news when flames shot from a condemned man's head. But if all goes as expected in the coming decade, the Deep South may soon cede its status as the cradle of capital punishment to Pennsylvania, the place James Carville likes to call "Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between." In this Amish promised land -- prodigiously peopled by conservative Christians and white Aryan supremacists -- family values is a call to arms, and capital punishment is suddenly a rediscovered birthright. Pennsylvania is working overtime to show the world that it's tough on crime; the state not only boasts the nation's fourth largest death row but has one of the fastest-growing populations of condemned men and women anywhere. National statistics may not support politicians' claims that capital punishment serves as a deterrent to anything save rational thought, but other states are rushing to follow Pennsylvania's lead, consigning ever-increasing numbers of their citizens to death. More Americans were executed in 1997 than in any of the previous 40 years. And with 3,200 Americans -- 220 of them in Pennsylvania -- now awaiting execution, we've had just a taste of the carnage to come. I'm a journalist who's lived and worked in Pennsylvania for the past five years, and in that time I've witnessed some of the most rapid -- and the most radical -- changes ever to influence capital-punishment politics. By the time Republican Tom Ridge became governor three years ago, Pennsylvania had enjoyed more than three execution-free decades. Ridge's three predecessors together signed just 29 death warrants -- none of which were carried out -- in their combined 16 years in office. But since becoming governor in 1995, Ridge has signed more than 100 warrants (more than 60 of them for African-Americans) and has executed two. His constituency is actively calling for more heads. If Ridge has his way, Pennsylvanians will bear witness to an assembly-line series of executions starting sometime this summer; the faster Ridge can grant their wishes, the more handily he'll win reelection next November. Death gets votes in Pennsylvania, as it does in every other place where the public has come to feel defenseless against perceived oppressors -- in this case largely poor blacks from Philadelphia, the county responsible for more than half the state's capital cases and home to Lynne Abraham, the woman the New York Times Magazine calls "America's Deadliest D.A." (She seeks death in 85 percent of eligible cases.) Thanks in large part to Abraham, Philadelphia claims more death row inmates than any other county save Harris (Houston) and Los Angeles. And as a Democratic contender in next year's mayor's race, she's hardly finished yet. When I began to investigate Pennsylvania's capital punishment machine last fall, for a book I'm writing, I found myself caught inside the spinning vortex of lawyers, prison guards, corrections officials, activists, politicians and inmates that create the death row experience in Pennsylvania. And working the system from the outside has proven more difficult than I'd ever imagined. Since the state's most famous death row inmate, international cause célèbre Mumia Abu-Jamal, became the subject of a flattering HBO investigation in 1996, the use of electronic equipment has been denied prison visitors. And with imminent serial executions making tabloid headlines alongside multiple news reports of worsening conditions in the state's prisons, Pennsylvania's death row is locked down tighter than ever. No longer, when I attempt a prison visit, am I surprised by any obstacle that's hurled before me. These days, I can only laugh upon finding myself embroiled in a heated public debate over what exactly should be done about a bra that sets off the metal detector. I can only laugh when a corrections officer Dust-Busts my body for drug residue. And I have a hard time keeping a straight face when a take-charge lieutenant in fatigues -- along with her docile male partner and a drug-sniffing golden retriever -- descend on me in the prison parking lot, the sergeant holding out a clipboard bearing a kind of Miranda statement to suspend my civil rights, take my license and ask me to step away from the car as if it's rigged with explosives. They are, I realize, just doing their part to remind me exactly who's in charge. And it doesn't take long to realize that when it comes to death row in Pennsylvania, hardship, fear and randomness are the order of the day. N E X T+P A G E: Alone in a cell for 23 hours a day - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ILLUSTRATION BY JEFF CROSBY |
