In this task, you will be shown a prompt from a judicial decision and multiple holding statements derived from citations following text in a legal decision.  Holdings represent the governing legal rule when the law is applied to a particular set of facts. There are five answer choices for each citing text. The correct answer is the holding statement that corresponds to the citing text. The four incorrect answers are other holding statements. You should find the correct option. There is a <HOLDING> token in the position of the citing text prompt where the holding statement was extracted.
Q: of discretion and, finally, that the death penalty is predominately imposed upon the poor. To prevail on his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, Crews must demonstrate that: 1) the underlying claim is of arguable merit; 2) counsel’s performance was unreasonable; and 3) counsel’s ineffectiveness resulted in prejudice. Commonwealth v. Pierce, 515 Pa. 153, 158-59, 527 A.2d 973, 975 (1987). As the United States Supreme Court held in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976), the cruel and unusual punishments clause of the Eighth Amendment does not prohibit the death penalty per se. Id. at 188, 96 S.Ct. at 2932; see also Commonwealth v. Zettlemoyer, 500 Pa. 16, 77, 454 A.2d 937, 969 (1982), cert. denied, 461 U.S. 970, 103 S.Ct. 2444, 77 L.Ed.2d 1327 (1983) (<HOLDING>). Rather, the Eighth Amendment proscribes the 
 Holding statements: (A) holding that the fact that defendant spent years on death row awaiting execution does not render the death penalty cruel and unusual punishment (B) holding that punishments are cruel when they involve torture or a lingering death (C) holding the death penalty disproportionately cruel and unusual when imposed for the crime of rape (D) holding that the death penalty does not violate the prohibition against cruel punishments set forth in article 1 section 13 of the pennsylvania constitution (E) holding that a criminal defendants right to an impartial jury is guaranteed by article 1 section 9 of the pennsylvania constitution
A: 
(D)