Testifying at the Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee...

Testifying at the Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee in the hearing on a bill to impose a 2-year moratorium on the state's death penalty, former state Attorney General Ernie Preate testified in favour of a moratorium, citing the politicisation of the death penalty, and the weakened state and constitutional safeguards against wrongful convictions. "Piece by piece, through state and federal statute and Supreme Court cases, both in Washington and (in Harrisburg), we have dismantled those protections that assured us of a mathematical certainty that an innocent man would not and could not be put to death in this state or in this nation," Preate said. "I was once a constructor of this apparatus of death,...but I can no longer support that which I helped to create."