To date, the death penalty no longer exists in 18 of the 50 U.S. States
To date, the death penalty no longer exists in 18 of the 50 U.S. States
46 MIN READ
The United States, by an administrative point of view, are composed of 50 States and 3 jurisdictions (District of Columbia, Federal Government and Military Administration).
To date, the death penalty no longer exists in 19 of the 50 U.S. States and the District of Columbia, better known as the nation’s capital city Washington D.C. The most recent death penalty abolitions took place in Nebraska in May 2015, in Maryland in May 2013 and in Connecticut in April 2012.
The death penalty is still in effect in 31 States and in 2 jurisdictions (Federal Government and Military Administration).
Although the United States is considered a death penalty country, executions are rare or non-existent in much of the nation: 28 of 53 jurisdictions in the U. S. either do not have the death penalty (20) or have not carried out an execution in at least 10 years (8). Most of those have not carried out an execution since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. An additional 5 have not had an execution in at least 8 years, for a total of 33 jurisdictions with no executions in that time.
In 2014, there were 35 executions, 4 less than in 2013. Only 7 States carried out an execution in 2014, 2 less than in 2013, and only 3 States – Texas, Missouri and Florida – accounted 80% of the executions.
The number of inmates on death row also decreased. As of 1 April 2015, there were 3,002 inmates under a sentence of death, a decrease of 68 from 31 December 2013. There were 73 new death sentences in 2014 (six less than in 2013), equalling the lowest number in the 40 years of the modern death penalty. Of the 32 states with the death penalty in 2014, only 20 imposed a death sentence in the year.
Problems with executions in Arizona, Ohio and Oklahoma, states’ inability to obtain lethal injection drugs, exonerations of people who were wrongly convicted, the availability of prison terms of life without parole and the cost of capital trials and the appeals process, are main factors in the persistent decline of executions and death sentences.
United Nations
On 18 December 2014, the United States voted against the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly.
Executions
In 2014, there were 35 executions, a decrease of 4 compared to 2013, and the lowest number in 20 years.
Executions took place in only 7 of the 32 States with the death penalty in 2014: Texas (10); Missouri (10); Florida(8); Oklahoma (3); Georgia (2); Ohio (1); Arizona (1). In 2014, no executions took place in 2 States – Alabama and Virginia – that carried out executions in 2013.
In 2015, as of 30 June, there were 17 executions in 5 States: Texas (9); Missouri (4); Georgia (2); Florida (1); Oklahoma (1) . No executions took place in 2 States – Ohio and Arizona – that carried out executions in 2014.
All executions in 2014 were carried out by lethal injection. And all have involved men, except for two carried out on 5 February and 17 September in Texas.
The average age of those executed in 2014 is 47.7 years. The average time between sentencing and execution of those put to death in 2014 was 17.6 years, 2.3 years more than in 2013.
As for race, 18 of those executed in 2014 were Black, 12 White, and 5 Latino. The 35 executed in 2014 had been convicted of 49 murders: the victims were 34 White, 8 Black, 6 Latino, and 1 Asian.
Death Sentences
Besides the executions, death sentences are also constantly decreasing. That is for the minor propensity of juries to hand down the maximum penalty and for always more widespread tendency of prosecutors to “content” themselves with minor sentences in exchange for shorter and more secure trials.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there were 73 new death sentences in 2014 (6 less than in 2013), equalling the lowest number since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
Of the 32 States and 2 jurisdictions (Federal Government and Military Administration) with the death penalty in 2014, 20 imposed a death sentence. Death sentences, like executions, were largely clustered in a few States. A big part of the sentences (50%) were handed down in 3 States: California (14), Florida (11), and Texas (11). Alabama is the state that, in proportion to its population, has issued the most death sentences in 2014 (4). Four death sentences were handed down by the Federal Government and none by the Military Administration.
In 2014, the Southern States have recorded 41 death sentences, the Western States have imposed 18, while 5 death sentences were handed down in the Northeast, as well as in the Midwest.
Death Row
The number of people on death row continued to decline. According to figures from NAACP-LDF “Death Row USA”, as of 1 April 2015, there were 3,002 inmates on death rows across the country, a decrease of 68 from 3,070 reported on 31 December 2013. The total population on death row has decreased every year since 2001. In 2000, 3,670 inmates were under a sentence of death.
California continued to have the largest death row population (746), followed by Florida (401), Texas (271), Alabama (201), and Pennsylvania (184). However, California has not carried out an execution in at least 9 years.
The racial demographics of death row nationwide are 43% white, 42% black, 13% Latin-American, and 2% other races (Native American, Asian, etc). Divided by gender, there are 54 women (1.8%) and 2,948 men (98.2%) on the United States’ death rows.
Abolitions and moratoriums
Seven States ended capital punishment recently: Nebraska (May 2015), Maryland (2013), Connecticut (2012), Illinois (2011), New Mexico (2009), New Jersey (2007) and New York (2007). All have abolished it by a parliamentary process, except for the State of New York, where the State’s Court of Appeals in June 2004 held that a portion of the death penalty law was unconstitutional, and in 2007 they ruled that their prior holding applied to the last remaining person on the State’s death row (since then, the State’s legislature has voted down attempts to restore the statute).
In four other States – Washington, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Oregon – the Governors granted a stay of executions and essentially put executions on hold because of concerns about the death penalty system.
Of the 33 jurisdictions where the death penalty is still in effect, 8 have not carried out an execution in more than ten years (hence, we can consider that they are implementing a “de facto moratorium”): Colorado (last execution in 1997), Kansas (1965), New Hampshire (1939), Oregon (1997), Pennsylvania (1999), Wyoming (1992), U.S. Federal Government (2003), and U.S. Military (1961). Five other States have not had an execution in over 8 years: Arkansas, California, Montana, Nevada, and North Carolina.
Since capital punishment was reintroduced in 1976, three States have executed only “volunteers”, i.e. death row inmates who voluntarily asked to hasten the execution process: Pennsylvania executed 3 people, Oregon 2, and Connecticut 1.
Legislation
During 2014 and the first six months of 2015, there were many legislative proposals concerning the death penalty, some towards abolition, others to create stricter norms regarding its application and others to facilitate its application. Many of these bills were short-lived, blocked in the preliminary phases of the legislative review process.
On 17 April 2014, New Hampshire’s Senate voted 12-12 on a death penalty repeal measure. The tie means capital punishment will stay on the books. In March, the House had voted in favour of repeal, and Gov. Maggie Hassan had said she would sign the measure into law.
On 24 April 2014, the Governor of Arizona, Janice Brewer, vetoed legislation that would have added more factors to the list of those jurors could consider in deciding whether someone convicted of a capital crime should be sentenced to life behind bars or executed.
On 27 January 2015, a bill to abolish the death penalty in Wyoming was defeated 5-4 by the House Judiciary Committee. Rep. Cathy Connolly, who sponsored the bill, said studies have shown that the death penalty is not a useful deterrent against crime. She added that the government shouldn’t decide who lives and who dies, especially when it has a track record of sentencing innocent people to death row. “In the end, innocence has been executed by the state,” she said. But others told the committee that the death penalty can comfort the families of victims and ensure that no one else can be hurt by the perpetrator.
On 11 February 2015, South Dakota’s Senate State Affairs Committee defeated 7-2 two measures to repeal or limit the death penalty in the state. The main sponsors of the bipartisan bills were Democratic Sen. Bernie Hunhoff and Republican Rep. Steve Hickey. Former Republican Attorneys General Mark Meierhenry and Roger Tellinghuisen, and Republican Sen. Arthur Rusch, a former judge, testified in favour of repeal. Meierhenry and Tellinghuisen said their views have shifted since they served in office. “I have changed my mind,” Meierhenry told the committee. “Violence does not solve violence.” On 19 February 2015, a bill to abolish the death penalty in Washington State perished for the year in the Legislature after the chairwoman of the House Judiciary Committee chose not to bring it up for a vote. Rep. Laurie Jinkins said that while she’s personally supportive of the bill she didn’t think this was the right time to move forward with it.
On 23 February 2015, a bill to end Montana’s death penalty stalled with a tied vote in the House. The bill, sponsored by Republican David Moore, would have replaced the death penalty with life in prison without parole. The House voted 50-50, defeating it.
On 13 May 2015, a State House committee voted 6-5 against releasing a bill to repeal Delaware’s death penalty to the full house. On 2 April, the legislation had been approved by an 11-9 vote, and Democratic Governor Jack Markell had come out on 7 May in support of death penalty’s repeal, saying that if a bill to abolish capital punishment reaches his desk, he would sign it.
Methods of Execution
All U.S. States and the Federal Government use lethal injection as their primary method of execution. The U.S. Military provides lethal injection as the sole method of execution.
Some States use a three-drug protocol, others use a two-drug process (applied for the first time in Ohio in 2014) and some a single-drug method for executions.
The three-drug protocol uses an anaesthetic, followed by a muscle relaxant to paralyze the inmate and potassium chloride to stop the inmate’s heart. The two-drug protocol uses a sedative as the first element and a lethal dose of a painkiller as the second drug. The one-drug protocol uses a lethal dose of an anaesthetic.
The work of several key human-rights groups focusing on the pharmaceutical industry that produces drugs used for lethal injection has made the acquisition of appropriate pharmaceuticals difficult for U.S. prison authorities. This has, in recent years, brought about numerous changes in lethal injection protocols as prison authorities attempt to work around the reluctance of pharmaceutical companies to collaborate in providing drugs traditionally used in the lethal injection process.
In an effort to thwart advocacy campaigns by anti-death penalty organisations that utilize freedom of information laws and the media to convince the drug’s makers to cut off the supply, some States have also passed laws to provide a cloak of secrecy around the names of suppliers.
In some States the “old methods” are still available upon request by the condemned and generally only for crimes committed before the adoption of lethal injection.
The electric chair is still available in 8 States: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma (electrocution is authorized if lethal injection is held to be unconstitutional and nitrogen gas is not allowed), South Carolina, Tennessee (also if both lethal injection is found unconstitutional and lethal injection drugs are not available), and Virginia. The gas chamber is still available in 5 States: Arizona, California, Oklahoma (as of 17 April 2015, nitrogen gas chamber would be employed if either lethal injection drugs are unavailable or if lethal injection is deemed unconstitutional), Missouri and Wyoming (also if lethal injection is ever held to be unconstitutional). The firing squad is available in 2 States: Oklahoma (it could be used if none of the previously mentioned methods are allowed) and Utah (in the absence of lethal injection drugs). Hanging is available in 3 States: Delaware, New Hampshire (only if lethal injection cannot be given) and Washington.
On 23 March 2015, the Governor of Utah, Gary Herbert (R), signed the bill to designate the firing squad as the state’s backup execution method. The bill, which survived narrow votes in the House on 13 February and Senate on 11 March, would allow firing squad executions in the absence of lethal injection drugs. Until 2010, prisoners could request death by firing squad, but after the execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner the state has removed that option.
On 17 April 2015, the Governor Oklahoma, Mary Fallin (R), ratified legislation which legalizes execution by nitrogen hypoxia. Under the new law, lethal injection would remain the state’s first choice for executions and the nitrogen gas chamber would be employed as a secondary method should lethal injection drugs become unavailable, or in the event the state’s protocol is deemed unconstitutional. “I believe capital punishment must be performed effectively and without cruelty. The bill I signed today gives the state of Oklahoma another death penalty option that meets that standard,” Fallin said in a statement announcing that she had signed the bill into law. There are no reports of nitrogen gas ever being used to execute humans, and critics say that one concern is that the method is untested. Some states even ban its use to put animals to sleep. But supporters of the new law maintain nitrogen-induced hypoxia is a humane and painless method of execution that requires no medical expertise to perform. “The process is fast and painless,” said Rep. Mike Christian (R), a former Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper who wrote the bill. “It’s foolproof.”
Of the 1,411 executions carried out in the USA since the death penalty was reintroduced in 1977 and until 30 June 2015, 1,236 were carried out by lethal injection, 158 on the electric chair, 11 in the gas chamber, 3 by hanging and 3 by shooting.
The Supreme Court
In more recent years, the Supreme Court of the United States has made “milestone” decisions, on one side, prohibiting the execution of minors (2005) and the mentally disabled (2002) and, on the other, confirming the constitutionality of lethal injection (2008).
None of the Supreme Court rulings issued in 2014 and the first months of 2015 brought substantial changes within the system of capital punishment, except that of 27 May 2014 which held in Hall v. Florida that Florida’s strict IQ cut-off for determining intellectual disability in capital cases is unconstitutional.
On 29 June 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed the constitutionality of Oklahoma’s lethal injection and, in particular, the use of Midazolam, the drug used in recent botched lethal injections in the United States. The Supreme Court held (5-4) in Glossip v. Gross that Oklahoma inmates “failed to establish a likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the use of Midazolam violates the Eighth Amendment,” which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Three inmates on Oklahoma’s death row had challenged the state’s use of Midazolam as the first drug in a three-drug protocol, saying that it “fails to render a person insensate to pain.” In a narrow decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court deferred to a District Court ruling upholding the use of Midazolam. Justice Alito said that, in order to prevail, the inmates would have had to identify a “known and available alternative method,” that has a lower risk of pain. In a sweeping dissenting opinion raising deep concerns about the death penalty itself, Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said, “I would ask for full briefing on a more basic question: whether the death penalty violates the Constitution.... Today’s administration of the death penalty involves three fundamental constitutional defects: (1) serious unreliability, (2) arbitrariness in application, and (3) unconscionably long delays that undermine the death penalty’s penological purpose. Perhaps as a result, (4) most places within the United States have abandoned its use.”
Exonerations and Commutations
“Exoneree” is a technical term that, in the U.S. justice system, indicates an individual convicted in the first degree but absolved on appeal. As is well noted, appeals in the United States are not one-time, unrepeatable events, but can be presented every time the defence feels that it has discovered new elements relevant to exonerating the condemned. It is not rare that certain “appeals” can be presented 20 years or more after initial sentencing. In some cases, the “exonerees” are obviously innocent (in cases where DNA evidence proves the guilt of someone else, for instance), in other cases, there is dismissal on appeal for “lack of evidence” or because, after so many years from the actual crime, the Public Prosecutor no longer has credible witnesses to testify.
At least 4.1 percent of defendants sentenced to death in the United States are innocent, according to a peer-reviewed research – Rate of False Conviction of Criminal Defendants Who are Sentenced to Death – published on 25 March 2014 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the world’s most respected and cited scientific journals. “With an error rate at trial over 4 percent, it is all but certain that several of the 1,320 defendants executed since 1977 were innocent,” the study concludes.
The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) keeps a list of these “exonerees”, according to which, since 1973 up to 8 June 2015, there have been 154 exonerations in 26 different States. The average time between sentencing and the recognition of one’s innocence is 11.2 years. In 20 cases, proof of innocence was thanks to new DNA testing.
For inclusion on DPIC’s Innocence List, defendants must have been convicted, sentenced to death and subsequently either their conviction was overturned and they were acquitted of all charges at re-trial, or all charges were dismissed by the prosecution, or they were given an absolute pardon by the governor based on new evidence of innocence.
According to the criteria set by the DPIC, in 2014 seven former death row inmates were exonerated in 4 States, the most since 2009. Another four death row inmates were exonerated in 2015, as of 30 June.
On 11 March 2014, after 30 years behind bars, most of them on death row, Glenn Ford walked free from the maximum security prison at Angola, in Louisiana, after prosecutors filed motions to vacate his conviction, indicating Ford “was neither present at, nor a participant in, the robbery and murder” of which he was convicted in 1984. Marty Stroud, the prosecutor who sent him to death row, apologized to him and admitted he was more interested in winning the case than achieving justice. On 29 June 2015, Glenn Ford died of lung cancer at the age of 65 while awaiting the outcome of separate federal lawsuits aimed at securing compensation for his imprisonment and failing health, which he claimed resulted from insufficient medical treatment while in prison.
On 12 June 2014, Carl Dausch was acquitted by the Florida Supreme Court after his conviction in 2011 because the evidence against him was not strong enough to conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he was the person responsible for a July 1987 murder and rape. “At best,” the Court said, the state created only “a suspicion of guilt.” Florida has had more exonerations than any other state (25).
On 3 September 2014, two men were freed in North Carolina. Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, two brothers who were convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1984, were exonerated after 30 years because of evidence uncovered by the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission. Both defendants were teenagers when they were accused of the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl. Brown’s sentence was later reduced to life in prison and his charge reduced to rape, but McCollum has remained on death row through decades of appeals. Both men are intellectually disabled. The Commission found DNA evidence near the crime scene belonging to another man, who had been already been convicted of a similar crime in the same area. The District Attorney did not oppose their release. On 21 November 2014, Ricky Jackson and Wiley Bridgeman were released from prison in Ohio after 39 years. Prosecutors filed a motion to drop all charges against Jackson, Bridgeman, and their co-defendant, Kwame Ajamu (formerly, Ronnie Bridgeman), who had been released in 2003. A judge officially dismissed the charges against all three defendants. They had been convicted and sentenced to death for a 1975 murder based on the testimony of a 12-year-old boy, who recanted at a hearing earlier in the month, saying he had not witnessed the murder at all.
On 23 March 2015, all charges against Debra Jean Milke were dismissed – 25 years after she was convicted and sentenced to die for the brutal murder of her four-year-old son. Milke was released from jail in 2013 after 22 years on Arizona’s death row, but still faced the possibility of a retrial and remained free on bail with an electronic monitoring bracelet. Milke’s conviction was based almost entirely on a police detective’s claims that she had confessed to him that she plotted to killed her son Christopher. The confession was never recorded and it was later revealed that the detective had a history of lying under oath and violating the rights of suspects.
On 3 April 2015, Anthony Ray Hinton was released after spending nearly 30 years on Alabama’s death row. Hinton was convicted of the 1985 murders of two fast-food restaurant managers based upon the testimony of a state forensic examiner that the bullets in the two murders came from a gun found in Hinton’s house. The prosecutor, who had a documented history of racial bias, said he could tell Hinton was guilty and “evil” just by looking at him. Hinton was arrested after a victim in a similar crime identified him in a photo line-up, even though Hinton had been working in a locked warehouse 15 miles away when that crime was committed. In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that Hinton had been provided substandard representation and returned his case to the state courts for further proceedings. Prosecutors decided not to retry him after the state’s new experts said they could not link the bullets to Hinton’s gun.
On 21 April 2015, in Mississippi, Oktibbeha County District Attorney Forrest Allgood announced that he would drop charges against death row inmate Willie Manning. In February 2015, the Mississippi Supreme court granted Manning a new trial, saying that key evidence was withheld. A witness testified that he saw Manning enter the victims’ apartment, but police records that were withheld from the defence show the apartment from which he claimed to have seen Manning was vacant at the time, and records from the apartment complex did not list the witness as a tenant. The witness later recanted his testimony, saying he feared he would be charged with the crime if he didn’t testify.
On 8 June 2015, Alfred Dewayne Brown left a jail in Texas, after he was declared a free man. Brown, 33, Black, had spent more than a dozen years behind bars, 10 of them sitting on death row. A Harris County jury sentenced Brown to death on 25 October 2005 for the robbery of a check-cashing business that ended with the fatal shooting of Officer Charles R. Clark and store clerk Alfredia Jones on 5 April 2003. Two years ago, District Attorney’s Office agreed that he deserved a new trial because evidence that could have helped his defence was withheld. Then, on 5 November 2014, the Texas court of criminal appeals overturned Brown’s conviction. The decision to overturn Brown’s conviction hinged on evidence of a phone call. Brown said he was at his girlfriend’s apartment and had made a phone call to her employer. A record of the call was eventually found when a homicide detective was cleaning out his garage last year. The find was not only potentially exonerating, but also a violation of a guiding principle of prosecutorial conduct, called a “Brady” violation. The Brady case precedent requires prosecutors to turn over evidence to defence attorneys. District Attorney Devon Anderson said she was dismissing the case, that she didn’t have enough evidence for a new trial, despite protestations from police officials that they had the right man. Anthony Graves, another Texas death row prisoner whose conviction was overturned in 2010, had tried to help Brown win a new trial, speaking with Brown’s girlfriend about the case and to Houston Chronicle columnist Lisa Falkenberg, whose coverage of the case helped her win a Pulitzer Prize in 2015.
Besides complete exonerations, many condemned received commutations to life imprisonment thanks to political interventions.
On 30 April 2014, in Ohio, Governor John Kasich granted clemency to Arthur Tyler, commuting his death sentence to life a month before his scheduled execution on 28 May. Tyler was grant clemency in part because of questions over whether he had killed Sander Leach or was simply present when it happened.
On 9 July 2014, Georgia’s Board of Pardons and Paroles spared the life of Tommy Lee Waldrip, commuting his sentence to life without parole the day before he was to be put to death. Waldrip is only the fifth death row inmate to have a sentence commuted by the Parole Board since 2002.
On 31 December 2014, in Maryland, Governor Martin O’Malley commuted the death sentences of the last 4 inmates remaining on death row, effectively ending capital punishment in the state. Maryland lawmakers voted 2 years ago to abolish the death sentence for future offenders beginning 2013. O’Malley said that leaving the last 4 prisoners to await the death penalty “does not serve the public good.” “In a representative government, state executions make every citizen a party to a legalized killing as punishment,” he said in a statement. The 4 prisoners – Vernon Evans, Anthony Grandison, Jody Lee Miles and Heath William Burch – had their sentences commuted by gubernatorial order to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
On 2 May 2014, as the last act of its legislative session, the Florida Senate passed a bill allowing the state to compensate James Richardson, who had been wrongfully sentenced to death and incarcerated for 21 years. In 1967, Richardson, who is black, was convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white jury for the murder of his seven children. Many years later, a former babysitter confessed to the crime, prompting an investigation that revealed that witnesses had been beaten to convince them to falsely testify against Richardson. In 1989, Richardson’s conviction was thrown out and he was released. Richardson, now a frail old man, had not been able to receive compensation for this injustice because the evidence from his case had been lost or destroyed. Now he will be able to apply for compensation based on the special prosecutor’s investigation and the order to release him from prison. Sen. Geraldine Thompson, a sponsor of the bill, said “This will allow him to have an opportunity to revisit some dreams that were deferred early in his very young life.”
On 17 December 2014, in South Carolina, seventy years after George Stinney Jr was found guilty of murder, Judge Carmen Mullins threw out his conviction. In 1944, Stinney was executed at the age of 14, so small that he had to sit on a phone book in the electric chair. It took a jury of 12 white men just 10 minutes to find the black teenager guilty of beating two white girls, ages 11 and 8, to death with a railroad spike. Stinney was the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century; in 1944, 14 was the legal age of criminal responsibility in South Carolina.
The Cost of the Death Penalty
Besides the consideration of misplaced justice, which has been the subject of political debate in recent years, questions of the “cost of the death penalty” are coming to the fore.
As is well known, in the United States the various courts have very precise budgets, which must be accounted for to the last cent. If prosecutors wish to try cases involving the death sentence they must provide more evidence, more lab results, more testimony and the State must provide the accused with better legal counsel. This all has its costs, which increase in successive phases of the legal process, because those who risk death have a right to increased free legal assistance, lab analysis to contrast that of the Prosecution (at cost to the State), and to hire expert witnesses (also at cost to the State) and to present a series of appeals and recourses that are not available to those who risk imprisonment. This means that when prosecutors begin death penalty cases, they start a process which drains funds from the State, and that, often, because of these expenses, there are fewer funds for other activities.
Studies have calculated that approximately 50% of the death sentences handed down eventually is transformed into sentences of life imprisonment after the appeals process. Other studies have shown, even in cases where the death sentence “holds,” keeping a person in prison for life costs twenty times less than keeping someone on death row for a few years and then putting them to death. On average, in the United States a death sentence costs between 1 and 3 million dollars, as compared to the 500,000 dollars a sentence of life without parole costs taxpayers.
The question of “cost” is bound to become more compelling in the years to come and, together with the question of errors of justice, should bring about important changes. In many interviews with politicians and in bills presented in numerous States, the problems related to the “cost of the death penalty” came under focus with consideration of an alternative: giving up on capital punishment, which usually involves people for which there is already ample proof for conviction and using the money saved to solve cases where criminals have yet to be identified.
On 14 January 2014, the Kansas Judicial Council, an advisory body to the legislature, released preliminary findings on the cost of the death penalty in preparation for legislative hearings on a repeal measure that would replace the death penalty with life without parole. The council found that state Supreme Court Justices spend 20 times more hours on death penalty appeals than on non-capital appeals; the Department of Corrections spends more than twice as much ($49,380 versus $24,690) to house a death-row inmate per year as to house a general-population inmate; capital cases take more than twice as many days in district court as non-capital cases.
On 17 March 2014, the Idaho Legislature released preliminary findings of a new study of the costs of the death penalty in the State. The study, commissioned by the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee and performed by the Office of Performance Evaluations of the Idaho Legislature, found that capital cases are more costly and take much more time to resolve than non-capital cases. The State Appellate Public Defenders office spent about 44 times more time on a typical death penalty appeal than on a life sentence appeal (almost 8,000 hours per capital defendant compared to about 180 hours per non-death penalty defendant). Capital cases with trials took 20.5 months to reach a conclusion while non-capital cases with trials took 13.5 months.
As of 2 October 2014, in Arizona, there were 119 inmates on death row, and the majority of them have been locked up for several decades. Inmates sit on Arizona’s death row for an average of 23 years before execution. At $81.11 per day, the state spends an average of $680,918.45 in housing fees per death row inmate. In total, death row housing fees cost the Arizona Department of Corrections $3,523,012.85 each year. However, the primary costs are trial costs, litigation costs and appeals costs. When a prosecutor seeks the death penalty, a defendant is guaranteed 2 defence attorneys. That results in approximately double the cost for taxpayers. A sentence of life without parole guarantees savings for taxpayers. The cost of housing an inmate in general population comes in at less than $60 dollars per day and there’s a limited appeals process, which trims court costs. “We know from other studies that if you compared the actual costs from the investigation to the time that an execution is actually carried out, it is probably 6 to 7 times higher for a death penalty case than it is for a life without parole (sentence),” said Chuck Laroue, a Death Penalty Alternatives board member.
A study commissioned by the Nevada legislature – released on 2 December 2014 – found that the average death penalty case costs a half million dollars more than a case in which the death penalty is not sought. The Legislative Auditor estimated the cost of a murder trial in which the death penalty was sought amount $1.03 to $1.3 million, whereas cases without the death penalty cost $775,000. The auditor summarized the study’s findings, saying, “Adjudicating death penalty cases takes more time and resources compared to murder cases where the death penalty sentence is not pursued as an option. These cases are more costly because there are procedural safeguards in place to ensure the sentence is just and free from error.” The study was based on a sample of Nevada murder cases and includes the costs of incarceration. Because certain court and prosecution costs could not be obtained, the authors said the costs were “understated,” and may be higher than the estimates given.
In December 2014, in a series of articles analyzing Pennsylvania’s death penalty, the Reading Eagle found that taxpayers have spent over $350 million on the death penalty over a period in which the state has carried out just three executions. Using data from a 2008 Maryland study, which concluded that death penalty cases cost $1.9 million more than similar cases in which the death penalty was not sought, the newspaper estimated that the cases of the 185 people on Pennsylvania’s death row cost $351.5 million. Even supporters of the death penalty agreed that the costs are a problem: “Definitely, the death penalty extremely strains our resources,” said Berks County District Attorney John Adams. Judge Thomas Parisi, also of Berks County, said he believed there was an astronomical cost difference between the average death penalty case and a life-sentence case.
On 7 January 2015, Seattle University released the results of a seven-month study into the costs of the death penalty in Washington State and found death penalty cases cost a million dollars more than similar cases where capital punishment is not sought. The study quantifies extra death penalty cost of 147 aggravated first-degree murder cases filed in Washington State since 1997. Combining all cost categories, the researchers found the average cost of a death-penalty prosecution and conviction is just over $3 million. Not seeking a death-penalty prosecution and sending a person to prison for life costs the state roughly $2 million.
The Stance of the “Executioner”… and the Victims’ Families
The effects of the death penalty on those who carry it out were clearly described by those who have worked for years on death row.
On 22 February 2014, in an op-ed in the Seattle Times, two former Washington state corrections officials voiced their support of Gov. Jay Inslee’s decision to put executions on hold. Dick Morgan, a former Director of Prisons, and Eldon Vail, former Secretary of the Washington Department of Corrections, wrote about their participation in the state’s 5 executions, saying, “We have witnessed visibly shaken staff carry out a questionable law that condones killing inmates who have been captured, locked behind bars and long since ceased being a threat to the public.” They added, “Ultimately, the death penalty is not about whether a given person deserves to live or die – it’s about whether government should be making that call.”
On 13 April 2015, four retired death-row prison officials – two wardens, a chaplain, and an execution supervisor – recently described the effect that carrying out executions has had on them. Frank Thompson, who served as a warden in Oregon and Arkansas, said he believed in capital punishment until he thought “about those flaws in the back of my mind that I knew existed with capital punishment. It’s being administered against the poor; it lacks proof that it deters anything.” He trained his staff to carry out executions, but, “I realized that I was training decent men and women how to take the life of a human being. In the name of a public policy that after all these years couldn’t be shown to increase the net of public safety.” Terry Collins spent over 32 years working in corrections and he watched the state of Ohio kill 33 men. Every time he drove to work for each execution he wondered: What if this one isn’t guilty? What if somebody missed something? Are we really sure? What if we’re wrong this time? Collins retired in 2014 as director of the Ohio. He said seeing exonerations gave him concerns about the death penalty: “The system does make mistakes. I don’t think you can make a mistake when you’re talking about somebody’s life.” Jerry Givens, who oversaw 62 executions in Virginia, raised similar concerns, “I knew the system was corrupted when we exonerated Earl Washington Jr. from death row...You have two types of people on death row: the guilty and the innocent. And when you have the guilty and the innocent, you shouldn’t have death row.” Rev. Carroll Pickett was a chaplain on Texas’s death row for 15 years and during 95 executions. He commented, “Standing by the gurney almost 100 times, and watching innocent men killed, watching repentant men killed, and seeing the pain among families and men and my employee friends, cannot leave my memories.”
Perhaps, the most unexpected stance on the death penalty came from the family members of victims, who have had a very important role to get the recent abolition of capital punishment in Connecticut, New Jersey, New Mexico, Maryland and Nebraska.
On 23 January 2014, John Breckenridge the partner of police officer Michael Briggs, who was murdered in 2006, called for an end to capital punishment in New Hampshire. Initially, Breckenridge supported a death sentence for Addison, and even spoke in favour of the death penalty before the state’s death penalty commission. However, he has had a change of heart about the death penalty and is calling for the abolition. He said his religious faith and conversations with Sister Helen Prejean led him to change his mind: “Given the Catholic view on the sanctity of life and our modern prison system and the means we have to protect society, it became clear to me that as a Catholic I could not justify the very pre-meditated act of executing someone who – for all the evil of his crime and all the permanent hurt he caused others – still lives.”
On 4 March 2015, family members of murder victims shared their support for a bill to end capital punishment in Nebraska, saying it prolongs the suffering of victims’ families and wastes tax dollars on endless appeals. Miriam Thimm Kelle, whose brother James Thimm was murdered by Michael Ryan at a farm near Rulo in 1985, said the Nebraska death penalty sentences family members of murder victims to their own life of purgatory. Instead of focusing their energy on grieving and moving forward with their lives, they track the appeals and publicity of killers and are forced to seek justice for decades. Elle Hansen of Lincoln, who lost three loved ones to murder, said arbitrary distinctions are drawn in Nebraska courts between which killers get the death penalty and which cases do not rise to that level. “I want to share the pain and outrage I feel when I hear politicians say that we need the death penalty for the worst of the worst,” Hansen said. “This is an absurd notion. “I guarantee you; each of our losses is the worst of the worst.”
In April 2015, during the penalty phase in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing trial, some of the survivors and the families of victims who died have asked that convicted bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s life be spared. Bill and Denise Richard, the parents of Martin Richard, the 8-year-old boy killed at the 2013 Boston Marathon, asked the government to take the death penalty off the table because it would mean endless appeals and delay their ability to move on. Jessica Kensky and Patrick Downes, a newly married couple who both lost legs during the 2013 bombings, said: “We must overcome the impulse for vengeance.” Jennifer Lemmerman, the sister of MIT Police Officer Sean Collier, who was killed in the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombing, said Tsarnaev should be sentenced to life in prison. “Whenever someone speaks out against the death penalty, they are challenged to imagine how they would feel if someone they love were killed. I’ve been given that horrible perspective and I can say that my position has only strengthened,” Lemmerman wrote. She went on to say, “I also can’t imagine that killing in response to killing would ever bring me peace or justice ... I choose to remember Sean for the light that he brought. No more darkness.”
On 18 May 2015, the Daily Mail published the story of a victim’s son who has changed his mind about the death penalty. Clifford O’Sullivan was just six when he appeared in a California court at the trial of his mother’s killer, Mark Scott Thornton, who has spent the past 20 years sitting on death row. O’Sullivan gave a stirring sentencing testimony during which he asked for the “bad man” to be killed. Vow 26, O’Sullivan has changed his mind and no longer believes that the death penalty is the right punishment for Thornton. O’Sullivan’s change of heart comes partly from his own experience of just how damaging the death penalty system is to victims’ families. “You don’t heal,” said O’Sullivan. With his strong belief that the capital punishment system doesn’t do what it is supposed to, O’Sullivan decided to write to his mother’s killer asking if he could visit him. In September 2014 – some 22 years after his mother’s death – O’Sullivan flew to California to meet with Thornton and the two men spoke for 5 hours. “Let us focus on making sure that the next 20 years are not a reflection of the past 20 years,” said Thornton. “Let’s find meaning in this, for your sake, for mine and for your mother’s.” “It was the greatest gift he could have given me,” O’Sullivan said. “If they put him up for a date I would stop it, just like I started it,” said O’Sullivan.
The Relationship between Crime and Punishment
In November 2014, the U.S. Justice Department released the annual FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2013, indicating that there were 4.5 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, a 0.2 decrease from the 2012 rate. Breaking down the data by region and using the classic division of the United States (Northeast, Midwest, South and West), the Northeast region, which uses the death penalty the least, had the lowest murder rate of the 4 geographic regions: 3.5 per 100,000 inhabitants (0.3 less than in 2012). By contrast, the South, which carries out, on average, more executions in the United States, had the highest murder rate: 5.3 (down from 5.5 in 2012). The murder rate in the West was 4.0 (- 0.2), while the rate in the Midwest was 4.5 (- 0.2).
For 2013, the average murder rate of death-penalty States was 4.4, while the average murder rate of States without the death penalty was 3.4. Among the top 10 States with the highest murder rates, only 3 are abolitionist States, while, among the 10 States with the lowest murder rates, 6 States have abolished the death penalty and another 2 have not practiced it for at least ten years.
So the Northeast, which has the lowest rate of homicides, is the region of the United States which has turned to the death penalty historically far less than other regions: for example, the last execution was in 2005 and, since the reintroduction of the death penalty in the USA, only 1% of all executions have occurred in the Northeast. The exact opposite is the case for the South, which accounted for about 82% of all US executions since 1976, while it continues to have the highest rate of violent crimes in the Country.
This fact is interpreted by many as proof that the death penalty has no impact as a deterrent, given that where it is not in effect, there are actually less homicides compared to where it is used heavily and with certain ostentation.
A new website, murderdata.org, estimates that each year in the United States at least 5,000 murders are not solved. From 1980 to 2012 are at least 211,000 murders unsolved (for “solution” it is meant an arrest followed by a trial, not necessarily by a conviction, or when a suspect is identified but cannot be arrested, for example because it is dead). The last official figures on 2013 estimates that 14,103 murders were committed in the United States, and 8,614, have been solved, 61%. The not-resolved cases are 39%. Murderdata.org is based on official statistics provided by the FBI (Uniform Crime Reports), but has integrated the official data with other data to estimate the existence of at least 21,000 murders not counted by the FBI from 1980 to 2012. The “not counted murders” came out from an extensive press review, and obtained under Freedom of Information Act requests. This story has to do with the death penalty too. As is known, the main abolitionist initiatives in recent years proposed to save funds from capital trials and to allocate them to solving cold cases. If, as calculated by Murder Data, unresolved cases are more than 5,000 a year, it is clear that this setting acquires argumentative weight. In recent years the United States has executed 40 inmates a year on average. Does it make sense to keep a huge structure that drains enormous resources to punish 40 murderers, if 5000 are left free?
Opinion Polls
In recent years, opinion polls show a basic ambivalence: when given a simple “yes” or “no” to whether one supports the death penalty, the answer “yes” maintains favour, and its decline, year by year, is slow. Instead, when opinion polls include a question offering life imprisonment without parole, things change drastically.
Between 1 and 4 June 2015, three national polls on the death penalty have been published, and each gave different results on the main question: would you rather back the death penalty or life imprisonment without parole? For two of the surveys the majority of Americans prefer life sentences, for the third they prefer death sentences. But when in one of the surveys that gives an overwhelming life sentence support, a terrorism hypothesis is added, the results have a dramatic change. On 1 June, it was released the Quinnipiac University poll, according to which 48% prefer life imprisonment, and 43% prefer death. On 4 June, it was released the Gallup poll, according to which 45% prefer life imprisonment, and 50% death. On 4 June, it was also released the ABC News/Washington Post poll, according to which 52% are pro-life imprisonment, and 42% pro-death. The Quinnipiac survey is more accurate because it has a sample of 1,700 respondents, while the other two have 1,000. But it is the Quinnipiac poll that may explain such diverse data. Quinnipiac adds two hypotheses: in the case of terrorism, and in the case of Tsarnaev, the young man of Chechen origin that a federal jury on 15 May sentenced to death for the massacre at the Boston Marathon. Assuming generic “terrorism”, the percentages becomes life imprisonment 36% against 58% death. Assuming “terrorism” with explicit reference to Tsarnaev, the death percentage rises again, up to 62%, while the “life” option drops to 34%. With these wide variations, an average of the three surveys may be calculated as follows: on the blunt question between life imprisonment and death, on average 48.3% of Americans have responded life imprisonment, 45% death. The inclusion in one of the three surveys of terrorism hypothesis reverses the outcome, and the average is about 51% death and about 44% life imprisonment.
[For further information on capital punishment in the United States of America, see the Death Penalty Information Center’s website.]
To date, the death penalty no longer exists in 19 of the 50 U.S. States and the District of Columbia, better known as the nation’s capital city Washington D.C. The most recent death penalty abolitions took place in Nebraska in May 2015, in Maryland in May 2013 and in Connecticut in April 2012.
The death penalty is still in effect in 31 States and in 2 jurisdictions (Federal Government and Military Administration).
Although the United States is considered a death penalty country, executions are rare or non-existent in much of the nation: 28 of 53 jurisdictions in the U. S. either do not have the death penalty (20) or have not carried out an execution in at least 10 years (8). Most of those have not carried out an execution since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. An additional 5 have not had an execution in at least 8 years, for a total of 33 jurisdictions with no executions in that time.
In 2014, there were 35 executions, 4 less than in 2013. Only 7 States carried out an execution in 2014, 2 less than in 2013, and only 3 States – Texas, Missouri and Florida – accounted 80% of the executions.
The number of inmates on death row also decreased. As of 1 April 2015, there were 3,002 inmates under a sentence of death, a decrease of 68 from 31 December 2013. There were 73 new death sentences in 2014 (six less than in 2013), equalling the lowest number in the 40 years of the modern death penalty. Of the 32 states with the death penalty in 2014, only 20 imposed a death sentence in the year.
Problems with executions in Arizona, Ohio and Oklahoma, states’ inability to obtain lethal injection drugs, exonerations of people who were wrongly convicted, the availability of prison terms of life without parole and the cost of capital trials and the appeals process, are main factors in the persistent decline of executions and death sentences.
United Nations
On 18 December 2014, the United States voted against the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly.
Executions
In 2014, there were 35 executions, a decrease of 4 compared to 2013, and the lowest number in 20 years.
Executions took place in only 7 of the 32 States with the death penalty in 2014: Texas (10); Missouri (10); Florida(8); Oklahoma (3); Georgia (2); Ohio (1); Arizona (1). In 2014, no executions took place in 2 States – Alabama and Virginia – that carried out executions in 2013.
In 2015, as of 30 June, there were 17 executions in 5 States: Texas (9); Missouri (4); Georgia (2); Florida (1); Oklahoma (1) . No executions took place in 2 States – Ohio and Arizona – that carried out executions in 2014.
All executions in 2014 were carried out by lethal injection. And all have involved men, except for two carried out on 5 February and 17 September in Texas.
The average age of those executed in 2014 is 47.7 years. The average time between sentencing and execution of those put to death in 2014 was 17.6 years, 2.3 years more than in 2013.
As for race, 18 of those executed in 2014 were Black, 12 White, and 5 Latino. The 35 executed in 2014 had been convicted of 49 murders: the victims were 34 White, 8 Black, 6 Latino, and 1 Asian.
Death Sentences
Besides the executions, death sentences are also constantly decreasing. That is for the minor propensity of juries to hand down the maximum penalty and for always more widespread tendency of prosecutors to “content” themselves with minor sentences in exchange for shorter and more secure trials.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there were 73 new death sentences in 2014 (6 less than in 2013), equalling the lowest number since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
Of the 32 States and 2 jurisdictions (Federal Government and Military Administration) with the death penalty in 2014, 20 imposed a death sentence. Death sentences, like executions, were largely clustered in a few States. A big part of the sentences (50%) were handed down in 3 States: California (14), Florida (11), and Texas (11). Alabama is the state that, in proportion to its population, has issued the most death sentences in 2014 (4). Four death sentences were handed down by the Federal Government and none by the Military Administration.
In 2014, the Southern States have recorded 41 death sentences, the Western States have imposed 18, while 5 death sentences were handed down in the Northeast, as well as in the Midwest.
Death Row
The number of people on death row continued to decline. According to figures from NAACP-LDF “Death Row USA”, as of 1 April 2015, there were 3,002 inmates on death rows across the country, a decrease of 68 from 3,070 reported on 31 December 2013. The total population on death row has decreased every year since 2001. In 2000, 3,670 inmates were under a sentence of death.
California continued to have the largest death row population (746), followed by Florida (401), Texas (271), Alabama (201), and Pennsylvania (184). However, California has not carried out an execution in at least 9 years.
The racial demographics of death row nationwide are 43% white, 42% black, 13% Latin-American, and 2% other races (Native American, Asian, etc). Divided by gender, there are 54 women (1.8%) and 2,948 men (98.2%) on the United States’ death rows.
Abolitions and moratoriums
Seven States ended capital punishment recently: Nebraska (May 2015), Maryland (2013), Connecticut (2012), Illinois (2011), New Mexico (2009), New Jersey (2007) and New York (2007). All have abolished it by a parliamentary process, except for the State of New York, where the State’s Court of Appeals in June 2004 held that a portion of the death penalty law was unconstitutional, and in 2007 they ruled that their prior holding applied to the last remaining person on the State’s death row (since then, the State’s legislature has voted down attempts to restore the statute).
In four other States – Washington, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Oregon – the Governors granted a stay of executions and essentially put executions on hold because of concerns about the death penalty system.
Of the 33 jurisdictions where the death penalty is still in effect, 8 have not carried out an execution in more than ten years (hence, we can consider that they are implementing a “de facto moratorium”): Colorado (last execution in 1997), Kansas (1965), New Hampshire (1939), Oregon (1997), Pennsylvania (1999), Wyoming (1992), U.S. Federal Government (2003), and U.S. Military (1961). Five other States have not had an execution in over 8 years: Arkansas, California, Montana, Nevada, and North Carolina.
Since capital punishment was reintroduced in 1976, three States have executed only “volunteers”, i.e. death row inmates who voluntarily asked to hasten the execution process: Pennsylvania executed 3 people, Oregon 2, and Connecticut 1.
Legislation
During 2014 and the first six months of 2015, there were many legislative proposals concerning the death penalty, some towards abolition, others to create stricter norms regarding its application and others to facilitate its application. Many of these bills were short-lived, blocked in the preliminary phases of the legislative review process.
On 17 April 2014, New Hampshire’s Senate voted 12-12 on a death penalty repeal measure. The tie means capital punishment will stay on the books. In March, the House had voted in favour of repeal, and Gov. Maggie Hassan had said she would sign the measure into law.
On 24 April 2014, the Governor of Arizona, Janice Brewer, vetoed legislation that would have added more factors to the list of those jurors could consider in deciding whether someone convicted of a capital crime should be sentenced to life behind bars or executed.
On 27 January 2015, a bill to abolish the death penalty in Wyoming was defeated 5-4 by the House Judiciary Committee. Rep. Cathy Connolly, who sponsored the bill, said studies have shown that the death penalty is not a useful deterrent against crime. She added that the government shouldn’t decide who lives and who dies, especially when it has a track record of sentencing innocent people to death row. “In the end, innocence has been executed by the state,” she said. But others told the committee that the death penalty can comfort the families of victims and ensure that no one else can be hurt by the perpetrator.
On 11 February 2015, South Dakota’s Senate State Affairs Committee defeated 7-2 two measures to repeal or limit the death penalty in the state. The main sponsors of the bipartisan bills were Democratic Sen. Bernie Hunhoff and Republican Rep. Steve Hickey. Former Republican Attorneys General Mark Meierhenry and Roger Tellinghuisen, and Republican Sen. Arthur Rusch, a former judge, testified in favour of repeal. Meierhenry and Tellinghuisen said their views have shifted since they served in office. “I have changed my mind,” Meierhenry told the committee. “Violence does not solve violence.” On 19 February 2015, a bill to abolish the death penalty in Washington State perished for the year in the Legislature after the chairwoman of the House Judiciary Committee chose not to bring it up for a vote. Rep. Laurie Jinkins said that while she’s personally supportive of the bill she didn’t think this was the right time to move forward with it.
On 23 February 2015, a bill to end Montana’s death penalty stalled with a tied vote in the House. The bill, sponsored by Republican David Moore, would have replaced the death penalty with life in prison without parole. The House voted 50-50, defeating it.
On 13 May 2015, a State House committee voted 6-5 against releasing a bill to repeal Delaware’s death penalty to the full house. On 2 April, the legislation had been approved by an 11-9 vote, and Democratic Governor Jack Markell had come out on 7 May in support of death penalty’s repeal, saying that if a bill to abolish capital punishment reaches his desk, he would sign it.
Methods of Execution
All U.S. States and the Federal Government use lethal injection as their primary method of execution. The U.S. Military provides lethal injection as the sole method of execution.
Some States use a three-drug protocol, others use a two-drug process (applied for the first time in Ohio in 2014) and some a single-drug method for executions.
The three-drug protocol uses an anaesthetic, followed by a muscle relaxant to paralyze the inmate and potassium chloride to stop the inmate’s heart. The two-drug protocol uses a sedative as the first element and a lethal dose of a painkiller as the second drug. The one-drug protocol uses a lethal dose of an anaesthetic.
The work of several key human-rights groups focusing on the pharmaceutical industry that produces drugs used for lethal injection has made the acquisition of appropriate pharmaceuticals difficult for U.S. prison authorities. This has, in recent years, brought about numerous changes in lethal injection protocols as prison authorities attempt to work around the reluctance of pharmaceutical companies to collaborate in providing drugs traditionally used in the lethal injection process.
In an effort to thwart advocacy campaigns by anti-death penalty organisations that utilize freedom of information laws and the media to convince the drug’s makers to cut off the supply, some States have also passed laws to provide a cloak of secrecy around the names of suppliers.
In some States the “old methods” are still available upon request by the condemned and generally only for crimes committed before the adoption of lethal injection.
The electric chair is still available in 8 States: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma (electrocution is authorized if lethal injection is held to be unconstitutional and nitrogen gas is not allowed), South Carolina, Tennessee (also if both lethal injection is found unconstitutional and lethal injection drugs are not available), and Virginia. The gas chamber is still available in 5 States: Arizona, California, Oklahoma (as of 17 April 2015, nitrogen gas chamber would be employed if either lethal injection drugs are unavailable or if lethal injection is deemed unconstitutional), Missouri and Wyoming (also if lethal injection is ever held to be unconstitutional). The firing squad is available in 2 States: Oklahoma (it could be used if none of the previously mentioned methods are allowed) and Utah (in the absence of lethal injection drugs). Hanging is available in 3 States: Delaware, New Hampshire (only if lethal injection cannot be given) and Washington.
On 23 March 2015, the Governor of Utah, Gary Herbert (R), signed the bill to designate the firing squad as the state’s backup execution method. The bill, which survived narrow votes in the House on 13 February and Senate on 11 March, would allow firing squad executions in the absence of lethal injection drugs. Until 2010, prisoners could request death by firing squad, but after the execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner the state has removed that option.
On 17 April 2015, the Governor Oklahoma, Mary Fallin (R), ratified legislation which legalizes execution by nitrogen hypoxia. Under the new law, lethal injection would remain the state’s first choice for executions and the nitrogen gas chamber would be employed as a secondary method should lethal injection drugs become unavailable, or in the event the state’s protocol is deemed unconstitutional. “I believe capital punishment must be performed effectively and without cruelty. The bill I signed today gives the state of Oklahoma another death penalty option that meets that standard,” Fallin said in a statement announcing that she had signed the bill into law. There are no reports of nitrogen gas ever being used to execute humans, and critics say that one concern is that the method is untested. Some states even ban its use to put animals to sleep. But supporters of the new law maintain nitrogen-induced hypoxia is a humane and painless method of execution that requires no medical expertise to perform. “The process is fast and painless,” said Rep. Mike Christian (R), a former Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper who wrote the bill. “It’s foolproof.”
Of the 1,411 executions carried out in the USA since the death penalty was reintroduced in 1977 and until 30 June 2015, 1,236 were carried out by lethal injection, 158 on the electric chair, 11 in the gas chamber, 3 by hanging and 3 by shooting.
The Supreme Court
In more recent years, the Supreme Court of the United States has made “milestone” decisions, on one side, prohibiting the execution of minors (2005) and the mentally disabled (2002) and, on the other, confirming the constitutionality of lethal injection (2008).
None of the Supreme Court rulings issued in 2014 and the first months of 2015 brought substantial changes within the system of capital punishment, except that of 27 May 2014 which held in Hall v. Florida that Florida’s strict IQ cut-off for determining intellectual disability in capital cases is unconstitutional.
On 29 June 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed the constitutionality of Oklahoma’s lethal injection and, in particular, the use of Midazolam, the drug used in recent botched lethal injections in the United States. The Supreme Court held (5-4) in Glossip v. Gross that Oklahoma inmates “failed to establish a likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the use of Midazolam violates the Eighth Amendment,” which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Three inmates on Oklahoma’s death row had challenged the state’s use of Midazolam as the first drug in a three-drug protocol, saying that it “fails to render a person insensate to pain.” In a narrow decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court deferred to a District Court ruling upholding the use of Midazolam. Justice Alito said that, in order to prevail, the inmates would have had to identify a “known and available alternative method,” that has a lower risk of pain. In a sweeping dissenting opinion raising deep concerns about the death penalty itself, Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said, “I would ask for full briefing on a more basic question: whether the death penalty violates the Constitution.... Today’s administration of the death penalty involves three fundamental constitutional defects: (1) serious unreliability, (2) arbitrariness in application, and (3) unconscionably long delays that undermine the death penalty’s penological purpose. Perhaps as a result, (4) most places within the United States have abandoned its use.”
Exonerations and Commutations
“Exoneree” is a technical term that, in the U.S. justice system, indicates an individual convicted in the first degree but absolved on appeal. As is well noted, appeals in the United States are not one-time, unrepeatable events, but can be presented every time the defence feels that it has discovered new elements relevant to exonerating the condemned. It is not rare that certain “appeals” can be presented 20 years or more after initial sentencing. In some cases, the “exonerees” are obviously innocent (in cases where DNA evidence proves the guilt of someone else, for instance), in other cases, there is dismissal on appeal for “lack of evidence” or because, after so many years from the actual crime, the Public Prosecutor no longer has credible witnesses to testify.
At least 4.1 percent of defendants sentenced to death in the United States are innocent, according to a peer-reviewed research – Rate of False Conviction of Criminal Defendants Who are Sentenced to Death – published on 25 March 2014 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the world’s most respected and cited scientific journals. “With an error rate at trial over 4 percent, it is all but certain that several of the 1,320 defendants executed since 1977 were innocent,” the study concludes.
The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) keeps a list of these “exonerees”, according to which, since 1973 up to 8 June 2015, there have been 154 exonerations in 26 different States. The average time between sentencing and the recognition of one’s innocence is 11.2 years. In 20 cases, proof of innocence was thanks to new DNA testing.
For inclusion on DPIC’s Innocence List, defendants must have been convicted, sentenced to death and subsequently either their conviction was overturned and they were acquitted of all charges at re-trial, or all charges were dismissed by the prosecution, or they were given an absolute pardon by the governor based on new evidence of innocence.
According to the criteria set by the DPIC, in 2014 seven former death row inmates were exonerated in 4 States, the most since 2009. Another four death row inmates were exonerated in 2015, as of 30 June.
On 11 March 2014, after 30 years behind bars, most of them on death row, Glenn Ford walked free from the maximum security prison at Angola, in Louisiana, after prosecutors filed motions to vacate his conviction, indicating Ford “was neither present at, nor a participant in, the robbery and murder” of which he was convicted in 1984. Marty Stroud, the prosecutor who sent him to death row, apologized to him and admitted he was more interested in winning the case than achieving justice. On 29 June 2015, Glenn Ford died of lung cancer at the age of 65 while awaiting the outcome of separate federal lawsuits aimed at securing compensation for his imprisonment and failing health, which he claimed resulted from insufficient medical treatment while in prison.
On 12 June 2014, Carl Dausch was acquitted by the Florida Supreme Court after his conviction in 2011 because the evidence against him was not strong enough to conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he was the person responsible for a July 1987 murder and rape. “At best,” the Court said, the state created only “a suspicion of guilt.” Florida has had more exonerations than any other state (25).
On 3 September 2014, two men were freed in North Carolina. Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, two brothers who were convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1984, were exonerated after 30 years because of evidence uncovered by the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission. Both defendants were teenagers when they were accused of the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl. Brown’s sentence was later reduced to life in prison and his charge reduced to rape, but McCollum has remained on death row through decades of appeals. Both men are intellectually disabled. The Commission found DNA evidence near the crime scene belonging to another man, who had been already been convicted of a similar crime in the same area. The District Attorney did not oppose their release. On 21 November 2014, Ricky Jackson and Wiley Bridgeman were released from prison in Ohio after 39 years. Prosecutors filed a motion to drop all charges against Jackson, Bridgeman, and their co-defendant, Kwame Ajamu (formerly, Ronnie Bridgeman), who had been released in 2003. A judge officially dismissed the charges against all three defendants. They had been convicted and sentenced to death for a 1975 murder based on the testimony of a 12-year-old boy, who recanted at a hearing earlier in the month, saying he had not witnessed the murder at all.
On 23 March 2015, all charges against Debra Jean Milke were dismissed – 25 years after she was convicted and sentenced to die for the brutal murder of her four-year-old son. Milke was released from jail in 2013 after 22 years on Arizona’s death row, but still faced the possibility of a retrial and remained free on bail with an electronic monitoring bracelet. Milke’s conviction was based almost entirely on a police detective’s claims that she had confessed to him that she plotted to killed her son Christopher. The confession was never recorded and it was later revealed that the detective had a history of lying under oath and violating the rights of suspects.
On 3 April 2015, Anthony Ray Hinton was released after spending nearly 30 years on Alabama’s death row. Hinton was convicted of the 1985 murders of two fast-food restaurant managers based upon the testimony of a state forensic examiner that the bullets in the two murders came from a gun found in Hinton’s house. The prosecutor, who had a documented history of racial bias, said he could tell Hinton was guilty and “evil” just by looking at him. Hinton was arrested after a victim in a similar crime identified him in a photo line-up, even though Hinton had been working in a locked warehouse 15 miles away when that crime was committed. In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that Hinton had been provided substandard representation and returned his case to the state courts for further proceedings. Prosecutors decided not to retry him after the state’s new experts said they could not link the bullets to Hinton’s gun.
On 21 April 2015, in Mississippi, Oktibbeha County District Attorney Forrest Allgood announced that he would drop charges against death row inmate Willie Manning. In February 2015, the Mississippi Supreme court granted Manning a new trial, saying that key evidence was withheld. A witness testified that he saw Manning enter the victims’ apartment, but police records that were withheld from the defence show the apartment from which he claimed to have seen Manning was vacant at the time, and records from the apartment complex did not list the witness as a tenant. The witness later recanted his testimony, saying he feared he would be charged with the crime if he didn’t testify.
On 8 June 2015, Alfred Dewayne Brown left a jail in Texas, after he was declared a free man. Brown, 33, Black, had spent more than a dozen years behind bars, 10 of them sitting on death row. A Harris County jury sentenced Brown to death on 25 October 2005 for the robbery of a check-cashing business that ended with the fatal shooting of Officer Charles R. Clark and store clerk Alfredia Jones on 5 April 2003. Two years ago, District Attorney’s Office agreed that he deserved a new trial because evidence that could have helped his defence was withheld. Then, on 5 November 2014, the Texas court of criminal appeals overturned Brown’s conviction. The decision to overturn Brown’s conviction hinged on evidence of a phone call. Brown said he was at his girlfriend’s apartment and had made a phone call to her employer. A record of the call was eventually found when a homicide detective was cleaning out his garage last year. The find was not only potentially exonerating, but also a violation of a guiding principle of prosecutorial conduct, called a “Brady” violation. The Brady case precedent requires prosecutors to turn over evidence to defence attorneys. District Attorney Devon Anderson said she was dismissing the case, that she didn’t have enough evidence for a new trial, despite protestations from police officials that they had the right man. Anthony Graves, another Texas death row prisoner whose conviction was overturned in 2010, had tried to help Brown win a new trial, speaking with Brown’s girlfriend about the case and to Houston Chronicle columnist Lisa Falkenberg, whose coverage of the case helped her win a Pulitzer Prize in 2015.
Besides complete exonerations, many condemned received commutations to life imprisonment thanks to political interventions.
On 30 April 2014, in Ohio, Governor John Kasich granted clemency to Arthur Tyler, commuting his death sentence to life a month before his scheduled execution on 28 May. Tyler was grant clemency in part because of questions over whether he had killed Sander Leach or was simply present when it happened.
On 9 July 2014, Georgia’s Board of Pardons and Paroles spared the life of Tommy Lee Waldrip, commuting his sentence to life without parole the day before he was to be put to death. Waldrip is only the fifth death row inmate to have a sentence commuted by the Parole Board since 2002.
On 31 December 2014, in Maryland, Governor Martin O’Malley commuted the death sentences of the last 4 inmates remaining on death row, effectively ending capital punishment in the state. Maryland lawmakers voted 2 years ago to abolish the death sentence for future offenders beginning 2013. O’Malley said that leaving the last 4 prisoners to await the death penalty “does not serve the public good.” “In a representative government, state executions make every citizen a party to a legalized killing as punishment,” he said in a statement. The 4 prisoners – Vernon Evans, Anthony Grandison, Jody Lee Miles and Heath William Burch – had their sentences commuted by gubernatorial order to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
On 2 May 2014, as the last act of its legislative session, the Florida Senate passed a bill allowing the state to compensate James Richardson, who had been wrongfully sentenced to death and incarcerated for 21 years. In 1967, Richardson, who is black, was convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white jury for the murder of his seven children. Many years later, a former babysitter confessed to the crime, prompting an investigation that revealed that witnesses had been beaten to convince them to falsely testify against Richardson. In 1989, Richardson’s conviction was thrown out and he was released. Richardson, now a frail old man, had not been able to receive compensation for this injustice because the evidence from his case had been lost or destroyed. Now he will be able to apply for compensation based on the special prosecutor’s investigation and the order to release him from prison. Sen. Geraldine Thompson, a sponsor of the bill, said “This will allow him to have an opportunity to revisit some dreams that were deferred early in his very young life.”
On 17 December 2014, in South Carolina, seventy years after George Stinney Jr was found guilty of murder, Judge Carmen Mullins threw out his conviction. In 1944, Stinney was executed at the age of 14, so small that he had to sit on a phone book in the electric chair. It took a jury of 12 white men just 10 minutes to find the black teenager guilty of beating two white girls, ages 11 and 8, to death with a railroad spike. Stinney was the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century; in 1944, 14 was the legal age of criminal responsibility in South Carolina.
The Cost of the Death Penalty
Besides the consideration of misplaced justice, which has been the subject of political debate in recent years, questions of the “cost of the death penalty” are coming to the fore.
As is well known, in the United States the various courts have very precise budgets, which must be accounted for to the last cent. If prosecutors wish to try cases involving the death sentence they must provide more evidence, more lab results, more testimony and the State must provide the accused with better legal counsel. This all has its costs, which increase in successive phases of the legal process, because those who risk death have a right to increased free legal assistance, lab analysis to contrast that of the Prosecution (at cost to the State), and to hire expert witnesses (also at cost to the State) and to present a series of appeals and recourses that are not available to those who risk imprisonment. This means that when prosecutors begin death penalty cases, they start a process which drains funds from the State, and that, often, because of these expenses, there are fewer funds for other activities.
Studies have calculated that approximately 50% of the death sentences handed down eventually is transformed into sentences of life imprisonment after the appeals process. Other studies have shown, even in cases where the death sentence “holds,” keeping a person in prison for life costs twenty times less than keeping someone on death row for a few years and then putting them to death. On average, in the United States a death sentence costs between 1 and 3 million dollars, as compared to the 500,000 dollars a sentence of life without parole costs taxpayers.
The question of “cost” is bound to become more compelling in the years to come and, together with the question of errors of justice, should bring about important changes. In many interviews with politicians and in bills presented in numerous States, the problems related to the “cost of the death penalty” came under focus with consideration of an alternative: giving up on capital punishment, which usually involves people for which there is already ample proof for conviction and using the money saved to solve cases where criminals have yet to be identified.
On 14 January 2014, the Kansas Judicial Council, an advisory body to the legislature, released preliminary findings on the cost of the death penalty in preparation for legislative hearings on a repeal measure that would replace the death penalty with life without parole. The council found that state Supreme Court Justices spend 20 times more hours on death penalty appeals than on non-capital appeals; the Department of Corrections spends more than twice as much ($49,380 versus $24,690) to house a death-row inmate per year as to house a general-population inmate; capital cases take more than twice as many days in district court as non-capital cases.
On 17 March 2014, the Idaho Legislature released preliminary findings of a new study of the costs of the death penalty in the State. The study, commissioned by the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee and performed by the Office of Performance Evaluations of the Idaho Legislature, found that capital cases are more costly and take much more time to resolve than non-capital cases. The State Appellate Public Defenders office spent about 44 times more time on a typical death penalty appeal than on a life sentence appeal (almost 8,000 hours per capital defendant compared to about 180 hours per non-death penalty defendant). Capital cases with trials took 20.5 months to reach a conclusion while non-capital cases with trials took 13.5 months.
As of 2 October 2014, in Arizona, there were 119 inmates on death row, and the majority of them have been locked up for several decades. Inmates sit on Arizona’s death row for an average of 23 years before execution. At $81.11 per day, the state spends an average of $680,918.45 in housing fees per death row inmate. In total, death row housing fees cost the Arizona Department of Corrections $3,523,012.85 each year. However, the primary costs are trial costs, litigation costs and appeals costs. When a prosecutor seeks the death penalty, a defendant is guaranteed 2 defence attorneys. That results in approximately double the cost for taxpayers. A sentence of life without parole guarantees savings for taxpayers. The cost of housing an inmate in general population comes in at less than $60 dollars per day and there’s a limited appeals process, which trims court costs. “We know from other studies that if you compared the actual costs from the investigation to the time that an execution is actually carried out, it is probably 6 to 7 times higher for a death penalty case than it is for a life without parole (sentence),” said Chuck Laroue, a Death Penalty Alternatives board member.
A study commissioned by the Nevada legislature – released on 2 December 2014 – found that the average death penalty case costs a half million dollars more than a case in which the death penalty is not sought. The Legislative Auditor estimated the cost of a murder trial in which the death penalty was sought amount $1.03 to $1.3 million, whereas cases without the death penalty cost $775,000. The auditor summarized the study’s findings, saying, “Adjudicating death penalty cases takes more time and resources compared to murder cases where the death penalty sentence is not pursued as an option. These cases are more costly because there are procedural safeguards in place to ensure the sentence is just and free from error.” The study was based on a sample of Nevada murder cases and includes the costs of incarceration. Because certain court and prosecution costs could not be obtained, the authors said the costs were “understated,” and may be higher than the estimates given.
In December 2014, in a series of articles analyzing Pennsylvania’s death penalty, the Reading Eagle found that taxpayers have spent over $350 million on the death penalty over a period in which the state has carried out just three executions. Using data from a 2008 Maryland study, which concluded that death penalty cases cost $1.9 million more than similar cases in which the death penalty was not sought, the newspaper estimated that the cases of the 185 people on Pennsylvania’s death row cost $351.5 million. Even supporters of the death penalty agreed that the costs are a problem: “Definitely, the death penalty extremely strains our resources,” said Berks County District Attorney John Adams. Judge Thomas Parisi, also of Berks County, said he believed there was an astronomical cost difference between the average death penalty case and a life-sentence case.
On 7 January 2015, Seattle University released the results of a seven-month study into the costs of the death penalty in Washington State and found death penalty cases cost a million dollars more than similar cases where capital punishment is not sought. The study quantifies extra death penalty cost of 147 aggravated first-degree murder cases filed in Washington State since 1997. Combining all cost categories, the researchers found the average cost of a death-penalty prosecution and conviction is just over $3 million. Not seeking a death-penalty prosecution and sending a person to prison for life costs the state roughly $2 million.
The Stance of the “Executioner”… and the Victims’ Families
The effects of the death penalty on those who carry it out were clearly described by those who have worked for years on death row.
On 22 February 2014, in an op-ed in the Seattle Times, two former Washington state corrections officials voiced their support of Gov. Jay Inslee’s decision to put executions on hold. Dick Morgan, a former Director of Prisons, and Eldon Vail, former Secretary of the Washington Department of Corrections, wrote about their participation in the state’s 5 executions, saying, “We have witnessed visibly shaken staff carry out a questionable law that condones killing inmates who have been captured, locked behind bars and long since ceased being a threat to the public.” They added, “Ultimately, the death penalty is not about whether a given person deserves to live or die – it’s about whether government should be making that call.”
On 13 April 2015, four retired death-row prison officials – two wardens, a chaplain, and an execution supervisor – recently described the effect that carrying out executions has had on them. Frank Thompson, who served as a warden in Oregon and Arkansas, said he believed in capital punishment until he thought “about those flaws in the back of my mind that I knew existed with capital punishment. It’s being administered against the poor; it lacks proof that it deters anything.” He trained his staff to carry out executions, but, “I realized that I was training decent men and women how to take the life of a human being. In the name of a public policy that after all these years couldn’t be shown to increase the net of public safety.” Terry Collins spent over 32 years working in corrections and he watched the state of Ohio kill 33 men. Every time he drove to work for each execution he wondered: What if this one isn’t guilty? What if somebody missed something? Are we really sure? What if we’re wrong this time? Collins retired in 2014 as director of the Ohio. He said seeing exonerations gave him concerns about the death penalty: “The system does make mistakes. I don’t think you can make a mistake when you’re talking about somebody’s life.” Jerry Givens, who oversaw 62 executions in Virginia, raised similar concerns, “I knew the system was corrupted when we exonerated Earl Washington Jr. from death row...You have two types of people on death row: the guilty and the innocent. And when you have the guilty and the innocent, you shouldn’t have death row.” Rev. Carroll Pickett was a chaplain on Texas’s death row for 15 years and during 95 executions. He commented, “Standing by the gurney almost 100 times, and watching innocent men killed, watching repentant men killed, and seeing the pain among families and men and my employee friends, cannot leave my memories.”
Perhaps, the most unexpected stance on the death penalty came from the family members of victims, who have had a very important role to get the recent abolition of capital punishment in Connecticut, New Jersey, New Mexico, Maryland and Nebraska.
On 23 January 2014, John Breckenridge the partner of police officer Michael Briggs, who was murdered in 2006, called for an end to capital punishment in New Hampshire. Initially, Breckenridge supported a death sentence for Addison, and even spoke in favour of the death penalty before the state’s death penalty commission. However, he has had a change of heart about the death penalty and is calling for the abolition. He said his religious faith and conversations with Sister Helen Prejean led him to change his mind: “Given the Catholic view on the sanctity of life and our modern prison system and the means we have to protect society, it became clear to me that as a Catholic I could not justify the very pre-meditated act of executing someone who – for all the evil of his crime and all the permanent hurt he caused others – still lives.”
On 4 March 2015, family members of murder victims shared their support for a bill to end capital punishment in Nebraska, saying it prolongs the suffering of victims’ families and wastes tax dollars on endless appeals. Miriam Thimm Kelle, whose brother James Thimm was murdered by Michael Ryan at a farm near Rulo in 1985, said the Nebraska death penalty sentences family members of murder victims to their own life of purgatory. Instead of focusing their energy on grieving and moving forward with their lives, they track the appeals and publicity of killers and are forced to seek justice for decades. Elle Hansen of Lincoln, who lost three loved ones to murder, said arbitrary distinctions are drawn in Nebraska courts between which killers get the death penalty and which cases do not rise to that level. “I want to share the pain and outrage I feel when I hear politicians say that we need the death penalty for the worst of the worst,” Hansen said. “This is an absurd notion. “I guarantee you; each of our losses is the worst of the worst.”
In April 2015, during the penalty phase in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing trial, some of the survivors and the families of victims who died have asked that convicted bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s life be spared. Bill and Denise Richard, the parents of Martin Richard, the 8-year-old boy killed at the 2013 Boston Marathon, asked the government to take the death penalty off the table because it would mean endless appeals and delay their ability to move on. Jessica Kensky and Patrick Downes, a newly married couple who both lost legs during the 2013 bombings, said: “We must overcome the impulse for vengeance.” Jennifer Lemmerman, the sister of MIT Police Officer Sean Collier, who was killed in the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombing, said Tsarnaev should be sentenced to life in prison. “Whenever someone speaks out against the death penalty, they are challenged to imagine how they would feel if someone they love were killed. I’ve been given that horrible perspective and I can say that my position has only strengthened,” Lemmerman wrote. She went on to say, “I also can’t imagine that killing in response to killing would ever bring me peace or justice ... I choose to remember Sean for the light that he brought. No more darkness.”
On 18 May 2015, the Daily Mail published the story of a victim’s son who has changed his mind about the death penalty. Clifford O’Sullivan was just six when he appeared in a California court at the trial of his mother’s killer, Mark Scott Thornton, who has spent the past 20 years sitting on death row. O’Sullivan gave a stirring sentencing testimony during which he asked for the “bad man” to be killed. Vow 26, O’Sullivan has changed his mind and no longer believes that the death penalty is the right punishment for Thornton. O’Sullivan’s change of heart comes partly from his own experience of just how damaging the death penalty system is to victims’ families. “You don’t heal,” said O’Sullivan. With his strong belief that the capital punishment system doesn’t do what it is supposed to, O’Sullivan decided to write to his mother’s killer asking if he could visit him. In September 2014 – some 22 years after his mother’s death – O’Sullivan flew to California to meet with Thornton and the two men spoke for 5 hours. “Let us focus on making sure that the next 20 years are not a reflection of the past 20 years,” said Thornton. “Let’s find meaning in this, for your sake, for mine and for your mother’s.” “It was the greatest gift he could have given me,” O’Sullivan said. “If they put him up for a date I would stop it, just like I started it,” said O’Sullivan.
The Relationship between Crime and Punishment
In November 2014, the U.S. Justice Department released the annual FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2013, indicating that there were 4.5 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, a 0.2 decrease from the 2012 rate. Breaking down the data by region and using the classic division of the United States (Northeast, Midwest, South and West), the Northeast region, which uses the death penalty the least, had the lowest murder rate of the 4 geographic regions: 3.5 per 100,000 inhabitants (0.3 less than in 2012). By contrast, the South, which carries out, on average, more executions in the United States, had the highest murder rate: 5.3 (down from 5.5 in 2012). The murder rate in the West was 4.0 (- 0.2), while the rate in the Midwest was 4.5 (- 0.2).
For 2013, the average murder rate of death-penalty States was 4.4, while the average murder rate of States without the death penalty was 3.4. Among the top 10 States with the highest murder rates, only 3 are abolitionist States, while, among the 10 States with the lowest murder rates, 6 States have abolished the death penalty and another 2 have not practiced it for at least ten years.
So the Northeast, which has the lowest rate of homicides, is the region of the United States which has turned to the death penalty historically far less than other regions: for example, the last execution was in 2005 and, since the reintroduction of the death penalty in the USA, only 1% of all executions have occurred in the Northeast. The exact opposite is the case for the South, which accounted for about 82% of all US executions since 1976, while it continues to have the highest rate of violent crimes in the Country.
This fact is interpreted by many as proof that the death penalty has no impact as a deterrent, given that where it is not in effect, there are actually less homicides compared to where it is used heavily and with certain ostentation.
A new website, murderdata.org, estimates that each year in the United States at least 5,000 murders are not solved. From 1980 to 2012 are at least 211,000 murders unsolved (for “solution” it is meant an arrest followed by a trial, not necessarily by a conviction, or when a suspect is identified but cannot be arrested, for example because it is dead). The last official figures on 2013 estimates that 14,103 murders were committed in the United States, and 8,614, have been solved, 61%. The not-resolved cases are 39%. Murderdata.org is based on official statistics provided by the FBI (Uniform Crime Reports), but has integrated the official data with other data to estimate the existence of at least 21,000 murders not counted by the FBI from 1980 to 2012. The “not counted murders” came out from an extensive press review, and obtained under Freedom of Information Act requests. This story has to do with the death penalty too. As is known, the main abolitionist initiatives in recent years proposed to save funds from capital trials and to allocate them to solving cold cases. If, as calculated by Murder Data, unresolved cases are more than 5,000 a year, it is clear that this setting acquires argumentative weight. In recent years the United States has executed 40 inmates a year on average. Does it make sense to keep a huge structure that drains enormous resources to punish 40 murderers, if 5000 are left free?
Opinion Polls
In recent years, opinion polls show a basic ambivalence: when given a simple “yes” or “no” to whether one supports the death penalty, the answer “yes” maintains favour, and its decline, year by year, is slow. Instead, when opinion polls include a question offering life imprisonment without parole, things change drastically.
Between 1 and 4 June 2015, three national polls on the death penalty have been published, and each gave different results on the main question: would you rather back the death penalty or life imprisonment without parole? For two of the surveys the majority of Americans prefer life sentences, for the third they prefer death sentences. But when in one of the surveys that gives an overwhelming life sentence support, a terrorism hypothesis is added, the results have a dramatic change. On 1 June, it was released the Quinnipiac University poll, according to which 48% prefer life imprisonment, and 43% prefer death. On 4 June, it was released the Gallup poll, according to which 45% prefer life imprisonment, and 50% death. On 4 June, it was also released the ABC News/Washington Post poll, according to which 52% are pro-life imprisonment, and 42% pro-death. The Quinnipiac survey is more accurate because it has a sample of 1,700 respondents, while the other two have 1,000. But it is the Quinnipiac poll that may explain such diverse data. Quinnipiac adds two hypotheses: in the case of terrorism, and in the case of Tsarnaev, the young man of Chechen origin that a federal jury on 15 May sentenced to death for the massacre at the Boston Marathon. Assuming generic “terrorism”, the percentages becomes life imprisonment 36% against 58% death. Assuming “terrorism” with explicit reference to Tsarnaev, the death percentage rises again, up to 62%, while the “life” option drops to 34%. With these wide variations, an average of the three surveys may be calculated as follows: on the blunt question between life imprisonment and death, on average 48.3% of Americans have responded life imprisonment, 45% death. The inclusion in one of the three surveys of terrorism hypothesis reverses the outcome, and the average is about 51% death and about 44% life imprisonment.
[For further information on capital punishment in the United States of America, see the Death Penalty Information Center’s website.]
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