posted on December 11, 2006 05:25:08 PM
Number of inmates on US death row declines
44 minutes ago
Fewer convicts are being sent to death row in the United States, though 3,254 still faced death by execution by the end of 2005, according to an annual US Justice Department report.
At the end of 2000, 3,601 prisoners sat on US death rows, a figure that fell largely because fewer death sentences were handed down.
In 2005 US courts delivered 125 death sentences, far below the 325 in 1995.
The drop largely results from the advent of conclusive genetic identification, said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
"All the cases of innocents released through DNA testing at the end of the 1990s have made juries reluctant" to condem defendants to die, he told AFP.
"Prosecutors are seeking it less, and life without parole became a real alternative," he said.
There were 128 new arrivals on death row in 2005, while 194 left. Sixty inmates were executed, 21 died of natural causes, three committed suicide and one died by overdose.
Death sentences of 109 were modified on appeal, commuted to life in prison or rendered inapplicable by a March 2005 Supreme Court decision forbidding execution of prisoners who were minors at the time of the crime.
Of those executed in 2005, 98 percent were men, 42 percent were African Americans, who represent only 13 percent of the US population.
The youngest person executed was 20, the eldest, 90.
The average wait time on death row was 10 years, eight months.
The US state with the largest number of death row inmates, 646, is California, which also has the largest population of US states. Texas has 411.
However, California has executed only 12 since capital punishment was re-instated in 1976 in the United States, while 355 were killed in Texas.
Of the 52 inmates whose death sentence was carried out, 24 died in Texas.
I think the most disturbing part of this story is regarding the number of innocent people who through DNA testing were proven to be innocent. How many innocent people have been executed? It is notable that back just a few years ago, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in a dissenting opinion wrote, that innocence is NOT a bar to execution, the process must have finality. Scents of authoratarinism.
posted on December 11, 2006 06:12:04 PM
The fact that DNA testing has turned up many innocent people should be enough to overturn capital punishment. At least getting the information to the public about DNA testing has had an affect on juries.
posted on December 11, 2006 06:38:55 PM
That is the strongest argument against capital punishment. The possibility of killing an innocent person should be good reason to end state sanctioned murder today. Personally, I believe that capital punishment is barbaric.
posted on December 11, 2006 07:28:53 PM
One of the many reasons I support Barack Obama is that he opposes capital punishment for just the reasons given here.
However, I have to say that every year or so there's a crime so heinous that a part of me wants the criminal removed from the gene pool forever, fearing that life imprisonment instead still leaves a possibility of escape someday.
