The Atlantic Center for Capital Representation petitioned the state Supreme Court last week to use its “‘extraordinary jurisdiction’ power to provide oversight” on Washington County District Attorney Jason Walsh, “who has improperly filed capital charges in cases where the death penalty is clearly not warranted,” it announced https://www.atlanticcenter.org/washington-county-press-release in a press release last week.
The petition was filed on behalf of two people currently facing capital charges brought by the Washington County DA’s office.
According to the Atlantic Center, Washington County accounts for less than two percent of Pennsylvania’s population, but “the county is currently prosecuting 26 percent of the commonwealth’s death penalty cases.”
Stating that Walsh “has abused his power,” Atlantic Center executive Marc Bookman said, “He is using the death penalty as a political tool and a cruel threat to coerce people into giving up their constitutional rights under a wrongful threat of death. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court must intervene to stop his abuse of the law and his office.”
According to the center, the state Supreme Court has the authority to intervene in situations of public importance in which the harm that could be done must be resolved outside of normal legal proceedings.
The center says that even though a death sentence is only available in first-degree murder cases in which a list of aggravating circumstances is involved, “Walsh has frequently failed to show evidence of first-degree murder and aggravating factors even at the preliminary stages of cases, when the commonwealth’s burden of proof is lower than at trial.”
Atlantic Center staff attorney Frances Harvey stated that,“In most counties in Pennsylvania, these cases wouldn’t be death penalty cases,” and added that, “D.A. Walsh is well outside the boundaries of the law. Pursuing death against these people is unconstitutional and cruel.”
Harvey noted that Walsh’s actions are a powerful argument for why “the General Assembly must repeal the death penalty. The power to decide who lives and who dies can’t be trusted in the hands of a politician.”