Death-row reversals of fortune

Lerner said there also were a few aggressive homicide prosecutors who were not concerned about defendants' rights - just getting convictions.

The result: Defendants landed on death row.

Since then, more stringent training requirements have been put in place for defense lawyers, Lerner said, and the quality of representation in capital trials has improved. And he now gives high marks to homicide prosecutors.

"The court's a lot different, too," Lerner said. "By and large, the judges who have been trying homicide cases for the last eight to 10 years . . . are far more concerned about fair trials."

Changes in the law have made it harder for death sentences to survive "hyper-technical" judicial scrutiny, said Deputy Philadelphia District Attorney Ronald Eisenberg. He added that he also believes courts are "uncomfortable" with the death penalty.

"The higher rate of reversal here," he said, "has to be the attitude of judges."

A review of reversals in Pennsylvania cases shows they were ordered by judges of varying social philosophies.

For example: Antuan Bronshtein was sent to death row in 1994 for the murder of a Montgomery County jeweler. In 2005, a Third Circuit panel ordered a new sentencing hearing; one of the members was Samuel A. Alito Jr., now part of the conservative bloc on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Reversals by an ideological array of judges show that "the problems with the death penalty in Pennsylvania are systemic, endemic and pervasive," said Robert B. Dunham, a federal defender who is part of a special unit known statewide for winning appeals for death-row inmates. By his count, judges have granted new trials or sentencing hearings to 200 condemned prisoners in the state since 1978, with the majority handed down just since 2000.

So will there ever be an execution in Pennsylvania?

Lawyers who follow capital cases say that Alfred K. Albrecht, convicted of setting the 1979 fire that killed his wife, daughter and mother in Bucks County, is at risk. The Third Circuit, one of the last appellate stops for death-row inmates, ruled against him earlier this year.

If Abu-Jamal loses in the Third Circuit, he, too, will be in jeopardy.

But so far, said Castor, the Montgomery County district attorney, the courts are sending a loud message to those on Pennsylvania's death row: "If you hang in there long enough, you're eventually going to win."