This is a post about the death penalty and it's procedure and method. Most Lehigh County criminal lawyers have never handled a death penalty case. Under 61 P.S. section 3001 of the Death Sentence Execution Law, after the receipt of the record, unless a pardon or commutation has been issued, the Governor must, within 90 days, issue a warrant specifying a day for execution which shall be no later than 60 days after the warrant is signed.
If, because of a reprieve or a judicial stay of the execution, the date of execution passes without imposition of the death penalty, or unless pardon or commutation has been issued, the governor is required, within 30 days after receiving notice of the termination of the reprieve where the judicial stay, to reissue a warrant specifying a day for execution, which must be no later than 60 days after the date of reassurance of the warrant. If the governor fails to comply with the requirements of the statute, any Pardon or commutation has not been issued, the Secretary of Corrections of the Commonwealth is required, within 30 days following the Governor's failure to comply, to schedule and carry out the execution no later than 60 days from the date by which the Governor was required to sign the warrant. Upon receipt of the warrant, and until infliction of the death penalty or until lawful discharge from custody, the Secretary is required to keep the inmate in solitary confinement.
During this confinement, no person except the staff of the Department of Corrections, the inmate's attorney of record, or any other attorney requested by the inmate, and a spiritual advisor selected by the inmate, are allowed access to the inmate without an order from the sentencing court. Additional provisions of Sections 3001-3008 address the method of execution, witnesses to the execution, certification of the execution, discretionary post-mortem and disposition of the body, and the costs of the execution and post-mortem examination.
If you want to read about the history of the Pennsylvania death penalty and see that lethal injection is the current and only method used, go to the Department of Correction's History of the Death Penalty.