Detailing the desuetude of the death penalty in Pennsylvania

This new local story, headlined "In Pa. and elsewhere, death penalty is dying a slow death," tells a capital tale that has grown old in the Keystone State. Here is how the article gets started:

The crime was horrific: LaQuanta Chapman fatally shot his teenage neighbor, then dismembered him with a chainsaw. The Chester County District Attorney's Office promised it would seek the death penalty — and it delivered.

Chapman was sent to death row in December 2012.  But he remains very much alive, and two weeks ago the state Supreme Court reversed his death sentence, citing prosecutorial error.  Chapman is just the latest example of a death-row inmate spared execution.

In fact, no one has been executed in Pennsylvania since Philadelphia torturer-murderer Gary Heidnik in 1999.  And he requested it.  He is one of only three prisoners put to death since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.

In Pennsylvania and in other states around the nation, the death penalty — once a hot-button political issue — has been dying a quiet death.  Experts cite a variety a reasons, including a general decline in crime nationwide that has turned voters' attentions elsewhere.

District attorneys and other law enforcement officials continue to advocate for it, but as a political issue, it has all but disappeared.  "Let's face it, how many people actually get put to death?" said G. Terry Madonna of Franklin and Marshall College, calling the death penalty "virtually nonoperative" in Pennsylvania.  "In many states, it's a dead letter."

Gov. Wolf last year imposed a moratorium on executions pending a bipartisan committee's report on the commonwealth's use of capital punishment.  The report, more than two years overdue, is looking at costs, fairness, effectiveness, alternatives, public opinion, and other issues.

The committee, formed in 2011 during Gov. Tom Corbett's administration, has been collecting data with Pennsylvania State University's Justice Center for Research, which has just begun to analyze the information.  The basis for the center's death-penalty analysis will be 1,106 first-degree murder cases completed between 2000 and 2010, said Jeff Ulmer, a Pennsylvania State University professor working on the analysis.

The committee's report should follow before the end of the year, said Glenn Pasewicz, executive director of the state commission that oversees the committee.  Richard Long, executive director of the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association, which supports the death penalty, said the report needs to come out as soon as possible.

The moratorium, he said, "becomes less and less temporary with every day that passes." State Sen. Stewart Greenleaf (R., Bucks), one of the leaders of the state task force, stressed the need for it to be thorough.  "I think it's going to be a landmark review of the death penalty, certainly in Pennsylvania, maybe nationally," he said.

The American Bar Association and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Justice System are among the groups that have criticized the inequality of Pennsylvania's capital punishment system and have urged changes.  About 150 death sentences and capital convictions in the state have been overturned in the post-conviction process, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit anti-capital punishment group. Of those, 120 have had new sentences imposed.

But juries continue to issue death sentences.  Pennsylvania has 180 people on death row, the fifth largest number in the country.  The 178 men and two women are housed in three state correctional institutions.