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Emilie Lounsberry January 1, 2007 While New Jersey has just abolished the death penalty, a series of year-end rulings by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court underscored that capital punishment is still on the books in that state even if executions are hardly ever carried out.The state's high court affirmed four death sentences over the last five days, and ordered new hearings for two other death-row inmates - Willie Cooper of Philadelphia and George Banks of Luzerne County, the state's most notorious mass killer. Pennsylvania Senior Deputy Attorney General Jonelle H. Eshbach said prosecutors across the state are trying hard to get death sentences carried out. "I don't think the death penalty is going away in Pennsylvania," said Eshbach, who handled the Banks appeal and said she was pleased by the court's ruling. In the Cooper case, the high court said a new sentencing hearing must be held because of "egregious and bizarre" remarks made by his attorney during the 2003 trial that essentially sanctioned the death penalty for Cooper. Banks, now 65, has been awaiting execution since 1983. He was convicted of a 1982 shooting rampage that killed 13 people, including five of his own children. The court ordered a new hearing to determine whether he is mentally competent to be put to death. Cooper and Banks are among 228 inmates awaiting execution in Pennsylvania, which has the fourth-largest death row in the nation. Just three inmates have been executed since the state reinstated the penalty in 1978, and all three essentially asked for execution after giving up their appeals. The appeals pipeline remains clogged as remaining death-row inmates seek new trials or sentencing hearings. Many of these prisoners have won significant victories in state and federal courts because of legal errors in their trials, often because of poor defense representation. Since 2000, about 50 inmates who had been facing execution have been resentenced to life in prison. Among those now awaiting a pivotal ruling is Philadelphia's best-known death-row inmate, Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose case has been followed around the world. He was sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. His appeal is now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and a ruling could come early in the new year. The U.S. Supreme Court will also hear arguments this month on a major death penalty issue - whether lethal injections are a form of cruel and unusual punishment. In the Cooper case, the defense lawyer, who was not identified, told the jury that while most people are familiar with the biblical phrase "an eye for an eye," not many knew that the Bible reserved the punishment of death for a person who kills a pregnant woman. The victim in the case, Sherita House, was pregnant when she was strangled in the Germantown home she shared with Cooper's brother. In an opinion posted Sunday on the court's Web site, Justice James J. Fitzgerald 3d wrote that the lawyer "unwittingly presented the jury with a compelling and independent basis for imposing the death penalty on his own client." Fitzgerald underscored the inappropriate nature of religious remarks, whether by prosecutors or defense lawyers. "We have not hesitated to find that religious references are improper and irrelevant when intended to persuade jurors to follow their religious beliefs, as opposed to the law of this commonwealth," he wrote. The court agreed with a ruling by a Philadelphia trial judge, who upheld Cooper's conviction but granted the new penalty hearing. In two other Philadelphia cases, the court upheld the death sentence for Mikal Moore, convicted in 1999 of a West Philadelphia shooting death, and for Ricardo Natividad, convicted in 1997 of shooting to death a gas-station attendant. It also affirmed the Erie County death sentence of David Copenhefer and the Lehigh County sentence of Edwin Rios Romero. Though the court affirmed the sentences, none of the four is in imminent danger of execution because all have more appellate avenues to pursue. Banks came within a day of execution in late 2004. His was the worst killing rampage by one person in state history. His mental condition is an issue because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that it is unconstitutional to execute the insane and that a condemned inmate must understand why he or she is facing execution. A Luzerne County judge in 2006 found Banks mentally incompetent. But the state Supreme Court has ordered a new hearing, saying the prosecution was unfairly barred from presenting the testimony of a psychiatrist. Defense lawyers had objected that the psychiatrist had spoken with Banks on one occasion outside their presence.
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