NUMBER OF EXECUTIONS FALLS FOR SECOND STRAIGHT YEAR

for the second year in a row, the number of executions declined across the country, a pattern partly attributable to the ebb and flow of the appeals process yet one that punctuates a year in which many states re-examined the fairness of capital punishment.
The last scheduled execution for 2001 occurred Wednesday night in Texas, when a convicted murderer, Vincent Edward Cooks, became the 66th inmate in the nation put to death, down from 85 in 2000 and 98 in 1999. This is the first time since executions resumed in 1977 that the number of executions has fallen in consecutive years.
In addition, the number of people sentenced to death nationally fell each year from 1998 to 2000, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which does not yet have figures for this year. Equally notable, Texas, the perennial leader in executions, saw a decline to 17 executions in 2001, compared with a record 40 last year, and trailed Oklahoma, which led the nation by executing 18 convicted murderers.
The drop in executions concludes a year in which capital punishment was debated in statehouses across the country as polls showed growing public concern that an innocent person could be put to death. Seventeen states enacted laws granting inmates access to post-conviction DNA testing, while five states banned the execution of mentally retarded inmates.
In all, 38 states allow the death penalty.
"The patterns are: public opinion down, legislative changes in many laws and death sentences and executions have been down for two years running," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the non profit Death Penalty Information Centre, a group critical of the death penalty that this week issued a year-end compilation of national and statewide statistics.
But officials in Texas and Oklahoma, the two states with the most significant changes, attributed the fluctuating execution numbers to the death-row appeals process rather than any anti-death penalty trend.
Oklahoma carried out 18 executions compared to 11 in 2000 as eight execution orders issued in October 2000 had been postponed over the holidays.
"It´s obviously the highest number of executions that have been carried out in the state´s history," Gerald Adams, a spokesman for Oklahoma´s attorney general, Drew Edmondson, said.
By comparison, executions dropped markedly in Texas this year after the period from 1997 to 2000 under the tenure of Gov. George W. Bush when the state executed a record 132 people. State officials said those cases had been backlogged in the legal system until court rulings allowed the executions to go forward. In addition, changes in federal and state laws led to a streamlined appeals process.
This year, with those backlogged cases carried out, the state returned to a more normal number of 17, said Larry Fitzgerald, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. As for 2002, Mr. Fitzgerald said the state had scheduled five executions for January through March 7.