12.18.09
Report: Fewest Death Sentences Since Death Penalty Reinstated in 1976
Via the DMN, Death sentences in Texas declining along with nationwide trend, anti-capital punishment group says. There are three factors that most believe go into this. Life without parole now being an option, the high cost of death penalty cases, and the number of people that have been exonerated and jurors balking at the possibility of sentencing an innocent person to death.
Reading the report from the Death Penalty Information Center, “The Death Penalty in 2009: Year End Report”, there are a couple of interesting tidbits.
Death sentences continued to decline in 2009, with this year having the fewest death sentences since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Death sentences reached a high of 328 in 1994 and have dropped 63% in the past decade. The number of new death sentences for the year is projected to be 106, the seventh straight year of decline.
The drop in death sentences was particularly pronounced in Texas and Virginia, the two leading states in carrying out executions. During the 1990s, Texas averaged 34 death sentences per year and Virginia averaged 6. This year, Texas had 9 death sentences and Virginia one.
The chart on the first page of the report makes is easy to see why Texas is such a focal point of death penalty scrutiny. Texas accounts for almost 50% of the executions annually, and has accounted for 447 of the 1,188 executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
One other interesting points are the comments of movement conservative stalwart Richard Vigurie:
Richard A. Viguerie, leading conservative spokesman
“The fact is, I don’t understand why more conservatives don’t oppose the death penalty. . . [It] is, after all, a system set up under laws established by politicians (too many of whom lack principles); enforced by prosecutors (many of whom want to become politicians—perhaps a character flaw?—and who prefer wins over justice); and adjudicated by judges (too many of whom administer personal preference rather than the law). . . . Conservatives haveevery reason to believe the death penalty system is no different from any politicized, costly, inefficient, bureaucratic, government-run operation, which we conservatives know are rife with injustice.”
As well as these comments of former Texas Governor Mark White:
Mark White, former governor of Texas and active death penalty supporter
“There is a very strong case to be made for a review of our death penalty statutes and even look at the possibility of having life without parole so we don’t look up one day and determine that we as the State of Texas have executed someone who is in fact innocent.”
It’s not like the death penalty is going to be repealed anytime soon, especially in Texas. And that is why the work that the Texas Forensic Science Commission was doing, and hopefully will continue to do was so important. Without the public/jurors being confident enough in the legal system, that they are actually sentencing the guilty party to death, there’s likely to be less death sentences handed out. Even in Texas.