Thanks to the pressure that The Times News and other media outlets throughout the state put on a task force to get off the dime it has been sitting on since 2011 studying the pros and cons of the death penalty, the panel has finally made public its conclusions.

Gov. Tom Wolf, who issued a moratorium on the death penalty in February 2015, a month after taking office, will study the recommendations before deciding whether to lift the moratorium.

In announcing the moratorium 41 months ago, Wolf called the current system “flawed, ineffective, unjust and expensive.”

Republican Scott Wagner, who is the Republican challenging Wolf’s bid for a second four-year term this year, said he would lift the moratorium as one of his first actions if elected governor. Wagner favors a mandatory death sentence in certain types of crimes, such as fatal school and police killings.

So, nearly seven years in the making, were the conclusions worth the wait? It’s a mixed bag as far as I am concerned, but you need to judge for yourself.

The task force, made up of four senators (two from each party) and nearly two dozen advisory members, did not recommend abolishing the death penalty, as many anti-death penalty groups had advocated. It recommended making the state’s lethal injection protocol public and that it use “an appropriate and effective drug” to execute guilty criminals humanely.

Other recommendations included:

• Set up a publicly funded agency to give representation to defendants in capital crime cases.

• Adopt “guilty but mentally ill” as a degree of guilt.

• Follow the lead of other states that collect data to determine whether death sentences are used in an unfair, arbitrary or discriminatory way.

Wolf’s moratorium angered state associations for state police and district attorneys. Critics of the death penalty argue that the state spends hundreds of millions of dollars for a dysfunctional system and one in which there has not been an execution in the state since 1999 when Gary Heidnik was put to death for the murders of two women he imprisoned in his Philadelphia home.

There are about 150 inmates on death row — all of them men. This is 19 percent fewer than when Wolf imposed his hold on the death penalty. In the past 29 years, 36 inmates have died on death row awaiting execution.

Pennsylvania had abolished the death penalty for a time but reimposed it in 1979. In the 20-year span until the last execution, three defendants were executed.

One of the most notorious cases where the death penalty should have been imposed but wasn’t involved the June 6, 1986, robbery at the First National Bank of Bath at its East Allen Township branch in Northampton County.

Three bank employees were shot to death at what has become known as the area’s bloodiest bank robbery. Dubbed the “D-Day Bank Massacre,” the events and the investigation were chronicled in a book written by Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli.

Co-defendants Martin Appel, now 60, and Stanley Hertzog, now 61, were convicted of the killings. Hertzog is serving three consecutive life sentences. Appel was sentenced to death, but a federal court overturned his conviction because of improper legal representation. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison without a chance for parole.

One of the most notorious current defendants facing the death penalty is Eric Frein, who gunned down state police Cpl. Bryon Dickson and wounded trooper Alex Douglass at the Blooming Grove state police substation in Pike County in September 2014.

On April 19, 2017, Frein was found guilty on all charges. A week later, the jury recommended the death penalty. The following day, Frein was formally sentenced to death by lethal injection. Frein is awaiting execution on death row at the State Correctional Institution in Greene County, a maximum-security prison in western Pennsylvania. His case is under automatic review.

Now that the task force has done its job, it’s time for the governor to get off his dime and lift the moratorium — the sooner, the better.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com