Evidence is mounting that Gov. Tom Wolf made the right call in 2015, when he announced a moratorium on executions in Pennsylvania until the state could compile a comprehensive report and review the practice.

The new report by researchers at Penn State University, which included court and prosecution records over an 11-year period, concluded that race does play a factor in how death sentences are doled out in the commonwealth.

According to the report, which was first reported upon by The Associated Press, a white victim increases the odds of a death sentence by 8 percent; when a victim is black, the chances of the death penalty being applied are 6 percent lower.

The report also found that the state’s death penalty is applied unevenly throughout Pennsylvania in general.

“A given defendants chance of having the death penalty sought, retracted or imposed depends a great deal on where that defendant is prosecuted and tried,” the report states. “In many counties of Pennsylvania, the death penalty is simply not utilized at all. In others, it is sought frequently.”

That’s likely at least partly a function of Pennsylvania’s county-centric focus on law and order. Locally-elected district attorneys are the ones responsible for evaluating cases, and they deploy the death penalty at their own discretion.

But the fact that the death penalty is not evenly administered in Pennsylvania shouldn’t surprise anyone. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, African Americans, which account for 11.6 percent of the state’s population, account for nearly 60 percent of death penalty sentences in Pennsylvania since 1980.

The troubling data doesn’t stop there. Other investigations have unearthed problems with defendants’ access to proper legal counsel while facing a death sentence. A 2015 investigation by the Reading Eagle newspaper found that nearly one in five Pennsylvania inmates sentenced to death since 2005 had been represented by attorneys disciplined for professional misconduct — and a majority of that discipline was because they had been found to be ineffective in at least one capital case.

Regardless of whether you support or oppose the death penalty, this kind of information makes it hard to argue with Wolf’s statement from 2015, when he called the state’s system of capital punishment a “flawed system that has been proven to be. ineffective, unjust and expensive.”

Where Pennsylvania goes from here — whether it reaffirms its use of capital punishment or decides to jettison the practice — is up to the General Assembly. But it’s clear that Wolf was correct to direct the state to err on the side of caution and suspend executions until a thorough review of the process is complete.