More #woke reporting from The Philadelphia Inquirer

We noted last week that the Lexington Herald-Leader declined to post the freely available mug shot of a suspected murderer on its website, even though all of the other media sources in that fair city did so, and I speculated — and yes, that is the correct word — that the editorial decision not to do so was because the suspect is black.

Justin Smith, named a ‘person of interest’ in the murder of Dianna Brice, as pictured in the New York Post.

Now comes The Philadelphia Enquirer Inquirer doing the same thing. The New York Post ran a story on Dianna Brice, 21, a missing and pregnant Delaware County woman, whose body was found in:

a wooded area in southwest Philadelphia, about one mile from where the car of her boyfriend, Justin Smith, 23, was found engulfed in flames hours after she vanished on March 30, WPVI reported.

CBS Philadelphia, citing police, said she had been shot. Smith is a person of interest in her slaying, the station reported.

One would think that the Inquirer would, as a public service to its readers, include the photo of Mr Smith, whom the Philadelphia Police Department have named as a ‘person of interest’ in the investigation of Miss Brice’s murder, in case one of the readers happened to spot Mr Smith, so that he could call the police. But if you thought that, you would be wrong.

Body of missing Upper Darby woman found in Southwest Philadelphia; boyfriend still missing

Dianna Brice had been reported missing March 30. Police tracked her cellphone and found her body in a wooded area in Southwest Philadelphia. Her boyfriend remains missing.

by Vinny Vella | Updated April 6, 2021

A pregnant woman reported missing from her home in Upper Darby was found dead late Monday, nearly one week after she disappeared, police said. Meanwhile, detectives continued their search for Justin Smith, the woman’s boyfriend and the last person seen with her.

Philadelphia police recovered the body of Dianna Brice, 21, in a wooded area near 58th Street and Eastwick Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia, according to Kevin Ryan, a private investigator working with Brice’s family. Officers found the body about 11 p.m. Monday, and forensic investigators later identified it as Brice’s, he said.

Upper Darby Police Superintendent Timothy Bernhardt on Tuesday said the investigation into her death is being handled by Philadelphia police and is being treated as a murder case.

It remained unclear how Brice died. Sources familiar with the investigation said officers found the body by tracking the young mother’s cellphone.

The Inquirer story was updated the day before the Post story was published, so while the Inquirer might not have known, at the time of publication, that the Philadelphia Police Department said that Miss Brice had been shot, they did know, as they published, that it was being treated as a murder case.

So, why not post a photo of the ‘person of interest’ on the Inquirer’s story? Yes, the Inquirer is a non-profit business now, and yes, bandwidth costs money, but the Inquirer had enough bandwidth available to include a photo by staff photographer José F Moreno of the site in which Miss Brice’s body was found. That means, among other things, that the Inquirer spent the money to send Mr Moreno out to the site to take the picture.

Now, to be fair, in an earlier story, the Inquirer did embed a tweet from the Upper Darby Police, in a story on the search for Miss Brice when she was missing, and that included a photo of Mr Smith:

But the newspaper couldn’t manage to include it in the story in which Miss Brice’s death was noted and in which Mr Smith was named as someone whom the police sought in the case. [1]This story was last checked by me at 11:49 AM EDT on Wednesday, April 7th, and this statement was accurate at that time. The photo might be added in a subsequent update, but I have no way of knowing … Continue reading

So, why wouldn’t a credentialed media source I have mockingly called The Philadelphia Enquirer not have published Mr Smith’s photo? [2]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt. The paper had the photo, and the paper had enough bandwidth available to include a photo of the street near where Miss Brice’s body was found. I can think of four possible reasons:

  1. Vinny Vella, the author of both stories on Miss Brice, forgot that he had included that tweet, with the photo, just the day before. If that is the case, Mr Vella isn’t particularly bright.
  2. Mr Vella’s editor — and yes, I am presuming here that an editor actually reviewed the story, as has been a journalistic tradition for, oh, more than a hundred years — didn’t remember the included tweet from the previous day, and never asked a question as to whether Mr Smith’s photograph was available, in which case that editor wasn’t doing a very good job;
  3. The Inquirer has taken an editorial decision not to publish very many photographs of suspects in criminal cases; or.
  4. The Inquirer has taken an editorial decision not to publish very many photographs of suspects in criminal cases, if those suspects are black.

Reasons 1 and 2 are evidence of incompetence. Could it be the third reason, that the Inquirer doesn’t print photos of suspects, period, for whatever reasons? That, I suppose, is possible, though if they are going to print the suspects’ names, that would seem more damaging, as those names could be much more easily found in future Google searches by prospective employers or whomever.

How about the fourth reason? That, I believe, is the more probable one, and given the #woke nature of the Inquirer staff, the ones who forced the firing resignation of Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski over the headline Buildings Matter, Too, I think it is a reasonable suspicion.

References

References
1 This story was last checked by me at 11:49 AM EDT on Wednesday, April 7th, and this statement was accurate at that time. The photo might be added in a subsequent update, but I have no way of knowing that at publication of this article.
2 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.

No media bias there, huh?

I have previously referred to The City of Brotherly Love’s venerable newspaper as The Philadelphia Enquirer, in mocking reference to the National Enquirer, and it seems as though every day brings more justification of that.[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.

Had an experience with extremists or conspiracy theories? Tell us about it.

Have you experienced extremism in your community, or seen family or friends divided by conspiracy theories? Tell us about it and a reporter may reach out to you.

by David Gambacorta | April 7, 2021

We are living in a paranoid time.

Communities of conspiracy theorists have sprouted online in recent years in response to school shootings, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2020 presidential election — distorting reality, amplifying divisions, and fueling real-world harm.

A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 73% of Americans believe that conspiracy theories are out of control. The Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which left five people dead, illustrated the risks of allowing extremism, and conspiracy theories like QAnon, to spread unchecked.

Have you experienced extremism in your community, or seen family or friends divided by conspiracy theories? Tell us about it in the form below and a reporter may reach out to you.

That’s all of the text. Mr Gambacorta’s end of article bio blurb is a short one:

I work on the investigative team, and narrative-driven projects.

I guess that the older style, something along the lines of “Mr Gambacorta is part of the Inquirer — to use the newspaper’s real name — investigative team,” isn’t young or #woke enough, and has to be more personalized.

But I digress. The article then gives four options in a response form:

Which extremist groups or conspiracy movements have you had an experience with?

  • QAnon
  • Proud Boys
  • Covid-19 Truthers
  • Other

Did you notice? All of the “extremist groups or conspiracy movements” given as options are those attributed to conservatives. There is no option to choose Antifa or #BlackLivesMatter as an extremist group with which one has had experience, even though Philadelphia experienced plenty of damage and violence in the protests over the killing of George Floyd and Walter Wallace.[2]Walter Wallace Jr was a mentally disturbed man who charged police with a knife, when officers responded to the fourth call from his family over his erratic behavior; the officers, who did not have … Continue reading

The Proud Boys, huh? A site search of the Inquirer’s website turned up this:

Far-right Proud Boys march through Center City

The alt-right Proud Boys marched through Center City Saturday with nearly 60 participants, many wearing body armor and helmets.

by Staff Reports | September 26, 2020

The alt-right Proud Boys conducted a march through Center City Saturday with nearly 60 participants, many wearing body armor and helmets, some waving American flags, and occasionally engaging in sharp verbal exchanges with onlookers.

They stopped in front of Independence Hall to sing The Star-Spangled Banner and then proceeded to City Hall, where they posed for a group photo, some displaying a white power sign with their fingers.

On the way there, they crossed paths without incident with the March to End Rape Culture, a protest to raise awareness about rape and express solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Later, the Proud Boys chanted “Back the blue” as they made their way to a parking garage at Penn’s Landing, where police closed off access until members of the group drove off.

The action came a week after the Proud Boys were expected to rally in Clark Park, when instead about 500 counterprotesters showed up to the popular West Philadelphia site in a progressive, racially diverse neighborhood.

Social media posts claimed Proud Boys were present, but were disguised as journalists to gather information about leftist activists.

If you open that article, you will see several photographs of the Proud Boys march in Philly, none of them showing any violence, none of them showing the buildings they burned or the stores they looted, because none of that happened! Not one story concerning the Proud Boys indicates any violence, any violence at all, by them in Philadelphia.

There was plenty, though, concerning the arrest of Zach Rehl, a Philadelphia man whom federal prosecutors say was a Proud Boys leader and participant in the January 6th Capitol Kerfuffle. The Feds want to keep Mr Rehl locked up before his trial begins, even though they have conceded that Mr Rehl did not participate in any violence himself:

Assistant U.S. Attorney Luke Jones conceded in court Friday that the government had no evidence that Rehl had directly participated in any property destruction or violence against police once he was inside Capitol grounds. But he balked at the suggestion from Rehl’s lawyer that the man was being jailed pretrial solely for expressing controversial political views.

“He is not before the court because of his opinions,” he said. “He’s before the court because of his actions and the people he led.”

Yet it was the Proud Boys, not Antifa and not Black Lives Matter, who organized and committed actual violence and vandalism, whom Mr Gambacorta listed as an extremist group!

Even though I am no longer a Pennsylvania resident, I do pay attention to foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, enough so that I broke down and subscribed to the Inquirer — after my wife told me to do so, seeing the conniptions through which I was going to get their stories without paying for them — but it doesn’t take much to see the leftward bias of that newspaper.

The editors, writers and reporters of The Philadelphia Enquirer Inquirer have, of course, their absolute First Amendment rights to think and say and print whatever they want, but I have the same rights to point out their utter stupidity.

References

References
1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.
2 Walter Wallace Jr was a mentally disturbed man who charged police with a knife, when officers responded to the fourth call from his family over his erratic behavior; the officers, who did not have tasers available to them, defended themselves.

With Donald Trump out of office, The Philadelphia Inquirer thinks nothing of publicizing criminality, knowing it won’t be punished

One way that you can tell that Donald Trump is no longer President of the United States is to read The Philadelphia Inquirer:

An undocumented house cleaner loses her job in Philly, but finds her mission

Altagracia Maria Herrera is an undocumented house cleaner who was excluded from most government aid, making the pandemic the first time she felt she didn’t belong in the United States.

By Robin Shulman | Monday, March 22, 2021

Altagracia María Herrera poses for a portrait outside of her home in Northeast Philadelphia on Wednesday, March 10, 2021. Herrera is an undocumented house cleaner who lost all her work during the pandemic. Photo by Heather Khalifa, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer

One night, as the pandemic shut Philadelphia down last March, Altagracia María Herrera, who cleans houses for a living, answered her phone.It was one of her employers, who, in broken Spanish, told her to stay home for the next few weeks, Herrera recalled.

“I understand,” responded Herrera, who was born in the Dominican Republic, lives in Northeast Philadelphia, and is a single parent to two U.S.-born daughters.

Then, over a few days, all her other cleaning jobs evaporated. Herrera had just enough saved to make her $750 rent. “After that, there was no money,” she said. As an undocumented immigrant, she didn’t qualify for relief from Washington — no stimulus checks, unemployment benefits, or ongoing salary funded by Paycheck Protection Program loans.

There’s much more at the original, but one thing is clear: she feels that she doesn’t belong in the United States because she really doesn’t belong in the United States. She is, the story tells us, “an undocumented immigrant,” the mealy-mouthed, Associated Press Stylebook term for an illegal immigrant, someone who is not an American citizen, someone who sneaked across the border illegally, someone who broke the law!

When Mr Trump was President, the Inquirer would never have printed her name, or noted that she lived somewhere in Northeast Philadelphia, or pointed out, in the photograph caption, that she was in the city on Wednesday, March 10, 2021. Why? Because under the Trump Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents might have used the information, tracked her down, arrested and deported her back to the Dominican Repub

Further down, the article tells us that Miss Herrera “followed her dream of a better life and joined a friend in Philadelphia” in 2000. the article does not tell us how she got to the United States from the Dominican Republic, an nation sharing the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

How did she enter? Did she overstay a legitimate visa, and simply not return home? Was she somehow smuggled into the United States via a private boat that landed at night on the Jersey shore or the Outer Banks of North Carolina? Either way, she broke the law!

The story tells us that Miss Herrera had two illegitimate children in the United States, which, sadly, makes them American citizens. The two daughters are now 17 and 15, and almost certainly have sucked up taxpayer dollars by attending Philadelphia’s public schools.

When the pandemic began, Herrera lost all five of her regular cleaning clients and pay of at least $650 a week. One employer said she had lost her job, and in a kind of trickle-down unemployment, could no longer pay Herrera.

Really? Five regular cleaning jobs? That means that either five separate clients were paying Miss Herrera cash ‘under the table,’ meaning that they were not withholding federal income taxes, state income taxes, the city wage tax, Social Security taxes and Medicare taxes, which is illegal, or Miss Herrera had presented falsified documents so that they could pay her legally, but also means she either forged documents herself, or paid someone else for forged documents.

Did Miss Herrera somehow pay her federal, state and local taxes? Did she pay her share of Social Security and Medicare taxes? Did she file her federal and state income tax forms? If she failed to do any of those things, she committed felonies!

The Inquirer article noted that Miss Herrera had an account with Wells Fargo bank. What documents did she present to open an account in her name. Was the account opened after the PATRIOT Act was passed, in which the documentation requirements became more stringent? Regardless, Miss Herrera must have presented some form of identification, and that means she presented forged documents to the bank. That is a felony.

So many people seem to think that crossing into the United States illegally is really no big deal. But living in the US illegally requires the commission of other crimes virtually every day. If someone is in the US, and has to work, he is doing so illegally. If he is working here illegally, and being paid in cash under the table, he is evading income taxes. If someone is paying him in cash that way, and fails to file a Form 1099 for the employed person — which would bring that person to the attention of the Infernal Revenue Service — the employer is committing a felony. There are so many things required to live and work in the United States which require the payment of taxes and having documentation that it really cannot be done legally if a person is an illegal immigrant.

And The Philadelphia Inquirer is covering that up!

“It has become increasingly clear that the restrictions placed on many resources prevent those who have greatest need from accessing them,” said Mayor Jim Kenney. The city is building another fund to lift 100,000 Philadelphians out of poverty over the next five years — and that fund will include undocumented immigrants, said Councilmember Maria Quiñones-Sánchez.

So, the great Mayor of Philadelphia, who has presided over 109 murders so far this year, an increase of 29% over the same date last year, a year which fell just one killing short of the city’s all-time record, is going to give money, including taxpayers’ dollars, to non-citizens, to people in the city and country illegally. He can’t do his job in making the city safer, but he can enable more crime.

That’s just great, isn’t it?

In a wryly humorous link at the bottom of the Inquirer article was an OpEd about ‘vaccine envy.’

There is massive inequity in vaccine distribution. Black, Latinx, and low-income communities are being underserved while continuing to bear the brunt of the virus. For those fortunate enough and healthy enough to just be waiting your turn, it’s easy to get impatient.

According to the Inquirer, Miss Herrera, an illegal immigrant, not only got her first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine earlier this month, but got a new cleaning job as well. She stepped in front of an American citizen, one who hasn’t been able to get the vaccine yet, and she got another job it is illegal for her to have.[1]Despite being in Tier 1C, and just a month short of my 68th birthday, I have not been able to schedule my vaccine appointment yet with the Estill County Health Department, even though my 32 and 29 … Continue reading

This is what is wrong with liberalism, with the left and the #woke. This is why Donald Trump won in 2016, and may well contribute to another populist candidate winning in 2024. When we are allowing blatant violations of the law to not only go unpunished, but seeing our credentialed media publicizing them without any fear of law enforcement stepping in, things have gone very wrong in our country.[2]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading

References

References
1 Despite being in Tier 1C, and just a month short of my 68th birthday, I have not been able to schedule my vaccine appointment yet with the Estill County Health Department, even though my 32 and 29 year old daughters, both living in Lexington, have gotten their first doses. I cannot blame Philadelphia for that, but the vaccine rollout in Kentucky has been, despite Governor Andy Beshear’s high praises, pretty bad.
2 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

Killadelphia!

I noted, just three days ago, that with 89 homicides in just 67 days of 2021, that the City of Brotherly Love, at that point killing off 1.328 people per day, ought to hit 100 homicides on March 16th.

Well, it seems that the good natured and kind hearted people of Philadelphia have taken that as a personal challenge; at the end of the 70th day, March 11th, 96 people have bitten the dust there, raising the rate to 1.371 per day. That means it should only take three days to kill off the four people needed to reach 100 homicides, which now means the end of March 14th.

At least on its main page, at 10:45 AM EST, The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t have a single story about any of the murders, about any of the seven homicides over the past three days. I guess none of the victims was a ‘somebody’ or a cute little white girl.

I’ve said it before: in Philadelphia, black lives don’t matter. The Philadelphia Tribune reported that, of the 499 homicides in the city in 2020, 86% of the victims were black, in a city in which less than 44% of the population are black. That black lives don’t matter is evidenced by the silence of the Inquirer when they are snuffed out. The #woke staffers who forced the resignation of Executive Editor Stan Wischnowski for his headline “Buildings Matter, Too” during the #BlackLivesMatter protests don’t seem to bother reporting on young black men being murdered because, well because young black males being murdered in Philadelphia simply isn’t news anymore. It would be a bigger story if a weekend day passed in the city without a killing.

I’m guessing that the Inquirer will have a story once that 100 homicides milestone is reached. That’s about all you can expect from them.

The sad, sad decline of The Philadelphia Inquirer

I ran across a photo if the masthead of The Philadelphia Inquirer from February 25, 1953, and noticed the ‘taglines’ that it used: “Public Ledger” and “An Independent Newspaper for All the People”. By Public ledger, the Inquirer was setting itself up as Philadelphia’s newspaper of record, which Wikipedia defines as “a major newspaper with large circulation whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered authoritative.” That Wikipedia article named four newspapers of record for the United States: The New York Times (Founded 1851), The Washington Post (1877), The Los Angeles Times (1881) and The Wall Street Journal (1889). First printed on Monday, Jun1 1, 1829, the then Pennsylvania Inquirer is older than any of them. “An editorial in the first issue of The Pennsylvania Inquirer promised that the paper would be devoted to the right of a minority to voice their opinion and ‘the maintenance of the rights and liberties of the people, equally against the abuses as the usurpation of power.’

Boy has that changed! As has happened to other great newspapers, the newsroom of the Inquirer was captured by the young #woke, who forced the firing resignation of Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski over the headline Buildings Matter, Too.

“Devoted to the right of a minority to voice their opinion”? Yeah, that failed, too, as the Inquirer closed comments on the majority of its articles, stating that:

Commenting on Inquirer.com was long ago hijacked by a small group of trolls who traffic in racism, misogyny, and homophobia. This group comprises a tiny fraction of the Inquirer.com audience. But its impact is disproportionate and enduring.

Really? How do they know? How can they be sure that these views do not represent more than a “tiny fraction” of their audience? Have they really done the research, or was it just that the #woke didn’t like the idea that the riff-raff could express their opinions? “An Independent Newspaper for All the People”? No, the Inquirer has now become a non-profit newspaper for the left.

There’s a reason I’ve called it The Philadelphia Enquirer, mocking its name by using the same spelling as the National Enquirer.[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.

Before I retired, I used to pick up a copy of the Inquirer at the Turkey Hill in downtown Jim Thorpe, on my way to the plant. I read it, as did my drivers, though they sometimes said I should have picked up the Allentown Morning Call instead, being somewhat closer to local news. I read a lot of stories in the Inquirer, about the killings of Philadelphia police officers, I noted how the newspaper didn’t really care much about the murders of young black men in the city, but has the killing of cute little white girl Rian Thal splashed through the paper for days.[2]That site search for Rian Thal returned 3,128 results! Think the Inquirer was obsessed much, or were they just printing what the editors thought their readers wanted to see?

So, I’m sad to see what the Inquirer has become. They write about “gun crime” as though an inanimate object somehow jumps up and shoot people all by itself, because it’s just too politically incorrect to note that that “gun violence” is disproportionately committed by black Philadelphians. The editors have dozens and dozens of articles claiming that #BlackLivesMatter, when it has become obvious, to anyone who reads the newspaper, that black lives don’t matter, unless they are taken by a white police officer.

Despite the fact that I said I wouldn’t, I finally subscribed to the digital edition of the Inquirer, after Mrs Pico kept telling me to do so rather than try to get copies of stories for free and then have to manually type them into my blog articles. But the paper has gone downhill, even from just ten years ago.

References

References
1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.
2 That site search for Rian Thal returned 3,128 results! Think the Inquirer was obsessed much, or were they just printing what the editors thought their readers wanted to see?

Is there no actual journalism practiced at The Philadelphia Inquirer?

It’s a pretty sad thing that I have come to check the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page every weekday morning.[1]The statistics are updated Monday through Friday only. Well, this is Monday morning, and the first of February, so we get the homicide statistics for the month of January. And an even fifty people didn’t experience much Brotherly Love in the City during what is normally the coldest month of the year.

In last year’s just-barely-missed-the-record, Philadelphia saw 38 homicides in January. Fifty is a 31.58% increase. Fifty in 31 days is a rate of 1.6129 per day, which, if maintained throughout 2021, would mean 589 people killed in the city’s mean streets.

Yet, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the newspaper of record for the city, the metropolitan area, and really the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, didn’t have the first hint of a story about this, at least not as of 11:38 AM EST, when last I opened the newspaper’s website.

Oh, there was plenty on the website’s main page. There was a big story about why the Inquirer was closing comments on its news stories, because “Commenting on Inquirer.com was long ago hijacked by a small group of trolls who traffic in racism, misogyny, and homophobia. This group comprises a tiny fraction of the Inquirer.com audience. But its impact is disproportionate and enduring.”

How can they be sure that these views do not represent more than a “tiny fraction” of their audience? Have they really done the research, or is it because the #woke in the newsroom, who got Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski fired to resign because he wrote an attention grabbing headline, but one of which the left wholly disapproved, didn’t like the idea that the riff-raff could express their opinions?

The Inquirer could post an OpEd piece by Patrick J Egan strongly in opposition to capital punishment,[2]Yes, I, too, am opposed to capital punishment, though not for the same reasons. The author claims that executions could resume once Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) is out of office, and a capital punishment … Continue reading but make no mention of the one crime, murder, that can result in capital punishment, even as it has surged to record levels?

How could fifty homicides, occurring at a higher rate than during the previous year be so blithely ignored, be not considered newsworthy?

Oh, wait, I know! You have to have actual journalists on the staff to practice journalism. No wonder I’ve seen it called The Philadelphia Enquirer!

References

References
1 The statistics are updated Monday through Friday only.
2 Yes, I, too, am opposed to capital punishment, though not for the same reasons. The author claims that executions could resume once Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) is out of office, and a capital punishment proponent is in office, while ignoring the fact that the previous Governor, Tom Corbett, a Republican, signed 47 separate death warrants during his four years in office, yet not one execution actually occurred.