States are moving in sharply different directions on the death penalty

States are moving in sharply different directions on the death penalty, with some looking to broaden when and how executions occur while others try to scale them back or end them entirely, reported Stateline.

Lawmakers in more than half of the states have introduced over 100 bills this year to either expand or limit capital punishment, to alter execution protocols, and to change how death sentences are imposed, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that studies capital punishment. The group does not take a position on the death penalty, but it is critical of how it is carried out.

Some of the bills seeking to expand the death penalty would have included crimes that have been hot-button issues, such as the killing of police officers, sexual offenses against children, abortion and crimes committed by people living in the country illegally. Lawmakers in at least seven states this year also have attempted to legalize alternative methods of execution.

Earlier in the year, however, some Republican legislators in conservative states — including Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio and Oklahoma — proposed measures to abolish the death penalty or impose moratoriums to halt pending and future executions. None of those efforts advanced through their legislatures.

Georgia, meanwhile, enacted a law barring the execution of people with intellectual disabilities.

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