Today, Philadelphia County is putting more people on death row than any county in the country except the Texas county where Houston is located. Blacks are 4.3 times more likely than whites to be sentenced to death in Pennsylvania for the same or similar crimes. There is no black chief prosecutor in the state of Pennsylvania. The mayors of Philadelphia have come from the prosecutor's office. In Allegheny county, one judge, Jeffrey Manning, continued to sit and judge cases while he was on trial for making racist remarks.
Racism is a major issue in the legal system.
Dickinson Law School, which is now part of the Pennsylvania State University system, has refused to accept Governor Ridge's selection to run the training program under conditions where the Philadelphia Defenders Association is excluded. We do not want to take it on. It is another thing to thwart the law. Here is an organization that files appeal after appeal in an effort to thwart the will of a jury. They don't want a fair fight.