Again, the report is here.
"Executions and Death Sentences in United States Dropped in 2008, Report Finds," is the New York Times report by Solomon Moore.
In 2007, 42 people were executed and 115 were sentenced to death.
The capital punishment data was compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center, a research and anti-death-penalty advocacy group.
The lull in executions defied predictions that more prisoners would be put to death after a Supreme Court ruling in April upheld lethal injection and ended an eight-month moratorium. Since that decision, Baze v. Rees, states have granted stays in 25 capital cases as courts worked through issues including the mental illness of defendants, ineffective representation and revelations of potentially exculpatory evidence.
Four death row inmates were exonerated in 2009, raising the total number of exonerations to 130 since 1976.
Richard C. Deiter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said that the decline in executions proved that capital punishment was becoming less popular.
“Revelations of mistakes, cases reversed by DNA testing, all of these things have put a dent in the whole system and caused hesitation,” Mr. Deiter said. “I don’t think what is happening is a moral opposition to the death penalty yet, but there is a greater scrutiny applied to the death penalty that wasn’t there before.”
The McClatchy DC's Bureau report focuses on Texas, which carried out 18 of the nation's 37 executions in 2008. "Texas still leads in executions, but the numbers are down here and across the nation," is written by Max Baker, via the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Texas has accounted for half of the executions in the United States so far this year, but the state gave lethal injections to far fewer inmates than last year, mirroring a national trend of fewer death sentences being carried out.
Eighteen inmates were executed in Texas this year compared with 26 last year, while 37 inmates were put to death nationally, with no more expected for the remainder of the year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
This year’s total is a 12 percent drop from the 42 executed nationally in 2007, and a 30 percent drop from 2006.
"Even in Texas, there has been a decline," said Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the center, a nonprofit group that opposes the death penalty. "It is still high when compared to others, but there could have been more."
"Report: US executions, death sentences on decline," is Matthew Barakat's AP report. It's in many newspapers and news sites this morning.
The report from DPIC, which opposes the death penalty, also indicates that executions in the U.S. have essentially become a regional phenomenon. All but four of the 37 executions this year occurred in the South and Texas, with Ohio and Oklahoma providing the exceptions. Half of the executions occurred in Texas, where 18 inmates were put to death.
Virginia executed four prisoners. Georgia and South Carolina executed three each; Florida, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Ohio each executed two and Kentucky executed one.
All of the executions in 2008 occurred after April 16, when a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the use of lethal injections ended what had been a de facto moratorium in place for almost seven months.
Experts differed on the moratorium's effect. Richard Dieter, the DPIC's executive director, had feared the numbers would spike in 2008 as states rushed to implement executions that had been on hold.
The fact that there wasn't a spike, he said, demonstrates the inherent problems with the death penalty, including the struggle to ensure a fair appeal process on issues like DNA evidence and inadequate lawyering.
But Richard Bonnie, a law professor at the University of Virginia and an expert on capital punishment, said it was expected that it would take some time after the moratorium was lifted for the normal pace of executions to resume, and he does not consider the drop in executions in 2008 as proof of a long-term decline.
What is more important, Bonnie said, is the drop in death sentences. That data is unaffected by the moratorium, which banned only executions, not death sentences handed down by judges and juries.
Death sentences have been on the decline more a decade. Bonnie said that while a majority of Americans still favor the death penalty, their fervor for it was waned as violent crime rates have receded.
Joan Biskupic writes, "Death row executions drop to 14-year low," for USA Today.
Texas, a longtime leader in the number of executions, conducted nearly half of this year's: 18. Yet it dropped from 26 in 2007.
"I think a good part of that was due to the court case, while Texas …waited for … the green light," says Shannon Edmonds of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association. "I am not expecting the drop-off in Texas to continue."
Yet University of Texas law professor Jordan Steiker notes Texas, like states nationwide, has fewer death sentences and could, in the long run, see a drop in executions.
Thirty-six states allow capital punishment. Some, including California, have suspended executions because of legal challenges over lethal injection. Others, such as Illinois, have slowed or temporarily halted the use of capital punishment for reasons such as concern over innocent defendants. The number of death sentences plummeted nationwide since the 1990s, separate data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics show.
Since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, executions peaked at 98 in 1999. Around that time, defendants started using DNA testing to assert their innocence.
Justice John Paul Stevens in April called for an end to the death penalty. Yet he said court precedent required him to vote to reject a challenge to lethal injections.
AFP has, "Executions in US at 14-year low: report."
When the Supreme Court upheld the southern state of Kentucky's lethal injection process in April, many execution dates were set.
But more than 25 stays of execution were subsequently granted as courts grappled with "issues including mental illness, possible innocence and ineffective representation in capital cases," the report said.
The huge financial burden of the death penalty has caused states, hard hit by the slumping US economy, to abandon or mull moving away from capital punishment.
In a report compiled in California, officials estimated that the most populous US state was spending about 138 million dollars a year on the death penalty, the DPIC said.
A commission in Maryland recommended abolishing the death penalty in the southern state after hearing expert testimony that one execution costs around 37 million dollars.
And New York and New Jersey have abandoned the death penalty "after weighing the merits of a system in which tens of millions of dollars were being spent with virtually nothing to show for it," the report said.
The number of new death sentences handed down in 2008 was estimated by the DPIC at 111, down slightly from 115 last year and massively -- by about 60 percent -- since the 1990s, when around 300 convicts were sentenced to death each year, the report said.
"Executions Declined Nationwide in 2008," is Tony Mauro's post at The BLT.
Concern about adequate legal representation for those facing capital punishment was also evident in 2008, the report states, with court rulings in Utah and New Mexico holding that the death penalty cannot be pursued without more funding for indigent representation.
Public opinion about capital punishment is also declining somewhat, as measured by the Gallup Poll. In 2008. 64 percent of those polled favored capital punishment for convicted murderers, compared to 68 percent last year and 71 percent in 1999.
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