Philadelphia may have completed its final capital punishment case Thursday due to the election of a district attorney who vowed to eliminate the death penalty.
Robert Lark, 63, was sentenced to life in prison Thursday after a jury failed to unanimously confirm a death penalty, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. It may have been the last time a jury even has the option, however. With the election of Democrat Larry Krasner as Philadelphia’s district attorney, the city is facing a bevy of changes to its justice system, and the death penalty may be the first to go.
Lark will serve a life sentence for the 1979 murder of Tae Bong Cho. Lark was first convicted in 1985 of murdering Cho to prevent him from testifying in court, a circumstance which further raises the penalty for murder. Cho was scheduled to testify the next morning that Lark had robbed him at gunpoint two months earlier.
Prosecutors argued that Lark’s extensive criminal history further qualified him for the death penalty. He has at least two other armed robbery convictions aside from his incident with Cho. Some on the jury, however, were convinced that Lark’s troubled childhood was a mitigating factor and that he didn’t warrant a death penalty.
Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf has maintained moratorium on capital punishment since 2015, and Pennsylvania hasn’t carried out an execution since 1999.
Juries across the state have held the power to sentence offenders to death regardless of the fact that the sentences are unlikely to be carried out. Krasner’s goal is to do away with the illusion and throw out the death penalty entirely.
As DA, Krasner will control the sentences prosecutors seek against offenders. Under his leadership, prosecutors will simply never seek the death penalty, preventing juries from making the sentence.
“If you, like us, believe it’s time to end the death penalty. If you think it’s time to end mass incarceration. If you think it’s time to stop making prisoners of poor people by using cash bail. If you are sick and tired of government stealing grandma’s house when she didn’t do anything wrong. And if you have no intention of helping Trump’s immigration agenda, we hope to hear from you,” Krasner said in his victory speech.
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