Mission and History

Pennsylvanians Against the Death Penalty (PADP) is a single-issue grassroots human rights organization dedicated to ending executions in the Commonwealth. We work with partners and members across the state to end Pennsylvania’s death penalty once and for all. We have strong bipartisan support, demonstrating how vital repeal is to both sides of the aisle. PADP leads #NoDeathPenaltyPA, the official campaign to abolish capital punishment.

Since the death penalty’s reintroduction in Pennsylvania in 1978, thirteen individuals sentenced to death were later exonerated, collectively spending 182 years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit. During the same period, three executions were carried out. One case highlights the system’s flaws: Alexander McClay Williams, a 16-year-old Black child, was the youngest person executed in Pennsylvania. Convicted by an all-white jury in 1931 for the murder of a white woman, he was executed without an appeal. His conviction was vacated posthumously in 2022, 91 years after his wrongful execution.

The death penalty has proven to be an arbitrary system that convicts – and executes – innocent people. Its use has been unequal in terms of race and geography, and it is expensive. We can keep our citizens safe and hold individuals accountable for their actions without the death penalty — in fact, it’s what we have already been doing. The last execution carried out in Pennsylvania was in 1999, so the Commonwealth has abandoned the death penalty in practice.

It’s time for Pennsylvania to move forward and join the people of 23 other states and the District of Columbia that have already abandoned the death penalty. Pennsylvania remains alone in the northeast as the last holdout with capital punishment still in its statutes.