It’s just four little words, but they can mean the difference between death or redemption.

A bill currently in the General Assembly — introduced by, among others, state Rep. Tim Bonner, R-17th — would add the words “beyond a reasonable doubt” to the statute governing imposition of the death penalty.

In Pennsylvania, once a jury convicts someone of murder in the first degree, they are charged with weighing whether to impose a sentence of life in prison or death based on the balance of mitigating and aggravating factors in the case. Mitigating factors include elements such as murder committed under duress, in a state of extreme emotional or mental stress or when the convicted is unable to appreciate the gravity of the act. Aggravating factors include mass murder, killing of young children and murder of legal officials.

A jury is asked to weigh such factors and whichever side they feel carries more weight makes the difference between life and death.

Such a weighted decision, one based on the adjudicating body’s feeling about what is more likely the case and not requiring a more stringent belief beyond reasonable doubt is called deciding on a preponderance of the evidence.

It is the standard used to decide civil cases and in the case of protection orders, in which the commonwealth, whether right or wrong, believes the danger to the accuser of not imposing restrictions on the accused outweighs the possibility of wrongly imposing the restriction.

In recent decades, thousands of people have been exonerated following wrongful convictions. According to U.S. Claims, an organization specializing in exonerating the wrongfully convicted, more than 3,000 people have been exonerated after wrongful convictions since 1989 with more than 200 in 2022 alone. The group cites various peer reviewed publications to show expert estimates that between 6% and 15% of convictions are wrongful.

Given those numbers, we hope the General Assembly will adopt those four little words raising the standard by which a life sentence or death is imposed to meet the highest judicial criteria.

It’s only four little words, but shouldn’t a decision on whether to take a life be decided ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.”

— JP