More Coverage of DPIC Report & A Look at Ohio

"Number of executions in 2008 marked 14-year low," is Vesna Jaksic's web-only report today at National Law Journal.

The number of executions in 2008 marked a 14-year low, continuing a declining trend since a high reached in 1999, according to a new report. Thirty-seven people were executed in 2008, compared to 42 in 2007, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that opposes capital punishment. The high was reached in 1999, when 98 people were executed.

With 18 executions, Texas again had the most executions, followed by Virginia with four.

The center also found that the number of new death sentences remained at a 30-year low. Citing data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the report said that 115 death sentences were issued in 2007, the lowest number since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The center estimated the number of death sentenced in 2008 at 111.

Earlier coverage of the DPIC report begins with this post.

"Ohio matches record-low 3 death sentences in '08," is the AP report via the Akron Beacon Journal.

Ohio juries sentenced three people to death last year, matching the lowest number since the state re-enacted capital punishment 27 years ago.

Records show the number of people indicted with capital crimes in Ohio is also lower than in past decades.

Ohio has 179 people on death row, the lowest figure in several years. The state has executed 28 defendants since 1999.

Prosecutors attribute the decline in death sentences to reduced crime rates and court decisions that have narrowed the eligibility for the death penalty.

They also say the availability of a sentence of life without the possibility of parole is leading juries to sentence fewer people to death.

Another factor: what one veteran prosecutor calls the "CSI factor," or impatience on jurors' part when evidence at trial isn't as splashy as what they see on TV crime shows.

"You have juries who expect more, so you may not get as many people sentenced to death," Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins said Tuesday.

Ohio juries sentenced three people to death in 1982, the first full year the death penalty was in place following the state's enactment of a new capital punishment law the previous fall.

The number jumped to 16 in 1984 and hit a high of 24 in 1985.

Death sentences have been in the single digits in Ohio since 2003 when 12 sentences were handed out.

Last year's low figure is consistent with a deep national decline in death sentences.

North Carolina had just one death sentence last year, the lowest since the U.S. Supreme Court declared capital punishment constitutional in 1976.

Texas, with the nation's busiest death chamber, had 11 death sentences, tied for the lowest in the past 30 years.

Both states have enacted life without parole laws in recent years.