death on the installment plan

Year after year, polls show that about 60 percent of U.S. citizens support executing people convicted of murder.

Until those citizens become jurors.

An Inquirer analysis of almost 2,000 Pennsylvania homicide cases filed between Jan. 1, 2007, and Feb. 3 shows that just 3 percent of first-degree murder cases - the only charge for which capital punishment is possible - that went to a jury ended with the jury's choosing death.

A third of all first-degree murder cases ended with a sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole, the remainder with guilty verdicts on lesser degrees of homicide, guilty pleas, acquittals, or dismissal of charges.

For the eight people with the dubious distinction of being condemned by Pennsylvania juries since 2007, it's more likely they will die of old age than the injection of chemicals that is now the state's method of execution.

Just three people have been executed since Pennsylvania reinstituted capital punishment in 1978 - two in 1995, the last in 1999 - and only because all three ended appeals and asked for death.

For the other 215 awaiting execution, there is life on death row - solitary confinement 23 hours a day in special units at four state prisons, some for as long as 27 years - a sentence some inmates have called "death on the installment plan."

Pennsylvania's execution stalemate hides a debate that continues in the state's legislative and legal communities.

Proponents complain that capital punishment, unused, mocks survivors of murder victims, condemning them to follow appeals for decades while waiting for a convicted killer to be executed.

Opponents say the death penalty is inhumane, is often wrongly and unfairly applied, deters no one, and caters to vengeance. A life sentence with no chance of parole - the law in Pennsylvania when a jury cannot agree on a death sentence - is just as effective.

And that is how Pennsylvanians vote when they get the chance as jurors deciding the fate of a fellow human.

Last year, just three Pennsylvanians were sentenced to death: one from Philadelphia, one from Lycoming County, one from York County.

State prison rolls list 211 men and four women awaiting execution - the fourth-largest condemned population among 35 states with the death penalty. New Jersey abolished capital punishment in 2007.