The Slow Demise of the Death Penalty?
By: Steve Grumm
A sort of macabre way to start off our holiday-week blogging, but from the National Law Journal:
The number of death penalty sentences has dropped to the lowest point since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, according to a Dec. 15 report released by the Death Penalty Information Center.
Seventy-eight capital punishment verdicts were handed down this year compared to 112 last year, according to the DPIC’s Year End Death Penalty Report. Executions also decreased from 46 in 2010 to 43 in 2011.
“This is a long-term drop since the year 2000…and this year was a sharper drop,” said Richard Dieter, DPIC’s executive director and the report’s author, in an interview.
There were several factors that contributed to this year’s drop, according to the report. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn passed legislation to repeal the death penalty; Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber decided to order no more executions during his term; there was a drop in crime; and finally, public distrust of the system grew after Troy Davis of Georgia was executed despite strong doubts of his guilt were made known.
Here’s some additional coverage from the AP/Washington Post which notes that, on top of the number of death sentences being down, actual executions have decreased, too:
New death sentences in the United States have declined 75 percent from their peak since executions resumed in the 1970s, an anti-capital punishment group reports.
The Death Penalty Information Center said 78 people convicted of murder were sentenced to die so far in 2011, the first time in 35 years there have been fewer than 100 new death sentences.
The option of locking a convicted killer in prison for life without a chance of parole, as well as heightened awareness of the risks of executing the innocent, are driving the decrease, said Richard Dieter, the center’s executive director and author of the report.
In the peak year of 1996, 315 people received death sentences.
The nation also is seeing a sustained drop in executions. The 43 executions in 2011 were roughly half as many as in 2000. Ninety-eight prisoners were put to death in 1998, the busiest year for U.S. death chambers since executions resumed in 1977 following a halt imposed by the Supreme Court.