In fact, the center’s report said support for the death
penalty is eroding, reported the ABA Journal. The death-row population is at a 25-year low, according to
the report. In 2018, Washington became the 20th state to abolish the penalty.
And in October, a Gallup poll found that only 49 percent of Americans think
capital punishment is “applied fairly,” the lowest level in the 18 years that
Gallup has asked that question.
“Death row in the U.S. has decreased in size every year
since 2001, even as the number of executions remains near a generational low,”
the report said. “The combination of court decisions reversing convictions or
death sentences, deaths from nonexecution causes, and exonerations now
consistently outpaces the number of new death sentences imposed.”
Since 1973—the year after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down
capital punishment laws in Furman v. Georgia—American courts consistently
handed down more than 100 death sentences per year, often more than 200. Use of
the sentence peaked in 1996 with 315 sentences but began a sharp decline around
2000 and has been under 50 new sentences since 2015. In 2018, the report said,
the number of new death sentences is expected to total 42, once a three-judge
panel in Ohio makes its ruling Dec. 28.
The reduction in sentences and executions may stem from a
reduction in popular support for the death penalty. In addition to the Gallup
poll, the report cites election results in Colorado—where governor-elect Jared
Polis had promised to abolish the death penalty—and in three states where efforts
to reinstate the death penalty were defeated. Pope Francis, the leader of the
Catholic Church, formally condemned executions, calling them “an attack on the
inviolability and dignity of the person.”
Also slowing the rate of executions was the controversy over
lethal injections. As pharmaceutical companies have started declining to sell
drugs to states wanting to use them for executions, states have turned to
compounding pharmacies with safety problems—an issue in Missouri and Texas, the
report said—or lied to suppliers about the purpose of the drugs. Both Nevada
and Nebraska were sued by drug companies that said the states misrepresented
their purchases.
And courts have weighed in, too. Most prominently, the
Washington Supreme Court abolished
the death penalty in the state, in October, saying it was “imposed in an
arbitrary and racially biased manner.” In addition, the U.S. Supreme
Court stayed
the execution of a man who is unable to remember his crimes because of
dementia and a series of strokes. The high court heard oral arguments on
whether executing such a person violates the Eighth Amendment.
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