Larry Krasner says the punishment is ‘really about poverty’ and race. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner—who vowed as a candidate not to seek the death penalty—has asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to declare that the sentence, as applied, violates the state’s Constitution. “Because of the arbitrary manner in which it has been applied, the death penalty violates our state Constitution’s prohibition against cruel punishments,” states a brief filed by Krasner’s office tonight in the case Jermont Cox v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania . “It really is not about the worst offenders,” Krasner told The Appeal. “It really is about poverty. It really is about race.” The new brief is part of a broader push that started last August, when lawyers representing Cox and another death row prisoner, Kevin Marinelli, asked the state Supreme Court to weigh in on Pennsylvania’s use of the death penalty. “Pennsylvania administers a system of capital punishment th...
Striving for a World without Capital Punishment