No, Arthur Bomar has not been executed. He was sentenced to death in December 1998 for the 1996 kidnapping, rape, and murder of Aimee Willard, and he remains on Pennsylvania’s death row as of 2026. Two things are keeping him alive: an unresolved federal appeal in the Third Circuit, and a statewide moratorium on executions that successive Pennsylvania governors have maintained since 2015.
Why No Execution Has Happened
Pennsylvania has not carried out any execution since 1999. Bomar came the closest in 2004, when Governor Edward Rendell signed a death warrant on April 15, 2004, setting a lethal injection date of June 10, 2004, at the State Correctional Institution at Rockview. His attorneys filed for a stay in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which appointed the Capital Habeas Corpus Unit of the Defender Association of Philadelphia to represent him and stayed the warrant for the duration of his federal habeas case. That habeas case is still not finished.
Layered on top of the litigation is a policy freeze. Governor Tom Wolf imposed a moratorium on executions in 2015, and Governor Josh Shapiro has continued it, stating publicly that he will sign a reprieve every time an execution warrant reaches his desk.
Where the Appeal Stands in 2026
On April 5, 2024, District Judge Juan R. Sánchez denied Bomar’s federal habeas petition. Bomar had raised nine claims, including that he was tried while incompetent, that prosecutors failed to disclose deals with jailhouse witnesses, that his attorneys were ineffective at both the guilt and penalty phases, that jurors were exposed to outside information, and that the DNA evidence was unreliable. Judge Sánchez found the state courts’ rulings were not objectively unreasonable under the deferential standard federal habeas law requires.
Bomar appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, where the case was docketed as No. 24-9001. He has completed briefing on his application for a Certificate of Appealability, the threshold he needs to clear before the Third Circuit will hear the merits of his appeal. As of the last docket activity in March 2026, the court had not ruled on the application.
The Long Road Through State and Federal Courts
A jury in the Court of Common Pleas of Delaware County convicted Bomar on October 1, 1998, of first-degree murder, rape, aggravated assault, kidnapping, and abuse of a corpse. At the penalty phase, the jury found three aggravating circumstances: the killing was committed during the perpetration of a felony; Bomar had a significant history of violent felony convictions; and he had previously been convicted of another murder, in Nevada. The jury found one mitigating circumstance but concluded the aggravators outweighed it. The court imposed death on December 4, 1998, along with consecutive terms of 10 to 20 years for rape, 10 to 20 years for kidnapping, and one to two years for abuse of a corpse.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed the death sentence on May 30, 2003, but vacated the rape, kidnapping, and abuse of corpse sentences and remanded for resentencing. Bomar was resentenced on those counts on April 1, 2004, receiving the same terms. The U.S. Supreme Court declined review. Two weeks later came the death warrant that was stayed in federal court.
With federal habeas paused, Bomar pursued state post-conviction relief. He filed a petition under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Relief Act in December 2004. Competency questions surfaced more than once. A pre-trial evaluation in January 1998 had found him competent, a post-sentencing motion for a competency evaluation was denied, and a November 2006 motion to find him incompetent to participate in PCRA proceedings was also denied after a hearing. Evidentiary hearings ran from 2008 to 2011. In March 2012, the PCRA court denied all claims in a 214-page opinion. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed in November 2014, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined review in October 2015. Only then did federal habeas litigation resume, ending in the 2024 denial now on appeal.
The Moratorium and What It Means for a Warrant
Even if the Third Circuit denies Bomar’s Certificate of Appealability and the U.S. Supreme Court declines further review, the moratorium stands between him and the death chamber. Governor Shapiro’s position is not discretionary case-by-case review; he has committed to reprieving every warrant. In December 2025, when the Department of Corrections issued a notice of execution for death row inmate Richard Laird, Shapiro issued the reprieve the same day.
Shapiro has also urged the legislature to abolish capital punishment. In April 2026, the state House Judiciary Committee approved two abolition bills: House Bill 888, sponsored by Representative Russ Diamond, and House Bill 99, sponsored by Representative Chris Rabb. Each cleared committee by a 14-12 vote and advanced to the full House. The chamber margins are tight. Democrats hold a 102-101 majority in the House, and Republicans hold a 28-22 advantage in the Senate. Pennsylvania has 103 people on death row.
Who Arthur Bomar Is
Aimee Willard was a 22-year-old George Mason University student and lacrosse player. On the night of June 19, 1996, she met friends at a bar in Wayne, Pennsylvania, and left alone around 1:25 a.m. on June 20. About 35 minutes later, her blue Honda Civic was found abandoned on the southbound off-ramp of the Springfield-Lima exit of Interstate 476, engine running, driver’s door open, headlights on. A tire iron and blood were at the scene. Her body was found later that day, around 5:00 p.m., in a vacant lot at 16th Street and Indiana Avenue in North Philadelphia. She had been beaten, raped, and killed.
Bomar came under suspicion the following year. On July 10, 1997, his girlfriend, Mary Rumer, told Pennsylvania State Police that Bomar had confessed to the killing, describing how he followed Willard from the bar, forced her to stop by flashing a fake police badge, punched her unconscious, and drove her to an abandoned building where he raped and killed her. Rumer said he had taken her to both the I-476 site and the vacant lot. Bomar, already in custody since June 5, 1997, on a Nevada parole violation warrant and an unrelated criminal trespass charge, also made incriminating statements to cellmate David O’Donald and another inmate, Quincy Jamal Williams.
Forensics locked the case in. DNA testing of bloodstains on the right front door panel of Bomar’s Ford Escort matched Aimee Willard. DNA from vaginal swabs taken from the victim matched Bomar, with a random-match probability of one in 500 million. A tire from his car matched impressions at the scene where her car was abandoned, and markings on the oil pan matched a patterned burn on the victim’s body. Bomar was formally charged on December 10, 1997.
He was on parole at the time of the murder. In 1979 in Nevada, he had been convicted of second-degree murder in the shooting death of 27-year-old Larry Carrier and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole after five years. He was paroled in 1990 after roughly 11 years and was permitted to relocate to Pennsylvania. That prior murder conviction became one of the three aggravating circumstances the jury relied on in sentencing him to death for the killing of Aimee Willard.
Nearly three decades later, that sentence has not been carried out, and none of the machinery that could carry it out is currently moving. Bomar’s fate now sits with the Third Circuit’s decision on his Certificate of Appealability and, beyond that, with whoever occupies the governor’s office when his appeals finally run out.