Notice Of Execution Signed For Convicted Cop Killer Eric Frein
HARRISBURG (KDKA/AP) -- The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has signed a Notice of Execution for convicted cop killer Eric Frein.
Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel signed the notice on Monday, setting June 22, 2020 for the execution of Frein.
Under state law, if the governor doesn't sign a warrant of execution within a certain time, the secretary of the Department of Corrections has 30 days to issue a notice of execution.
Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, has said he will grant a reprieve each time an execution is scheduled until the state Legislature addresses problems identified in a 2018 report. Wolf has called the system "ineffective, unjust and expensive."
The state has only executed three inmates since the death penalty was reinstated in the 1970s, and all three had given up on their appeals.
Frein was convicted in the 2014 murder of Cpl. Bryon Dickson II outside the Blooming Grove barracks. Another trooper, Alex Douglass, was badly wounded.
Frein led authorities on a 48-day manhunt through the rugged Pocono Mountains before U.S. Marshals caught him at an abandoned airplane hangar.
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He was convicted in 2017, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld his death sentence last April.
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