US DEATH SENTENCES DECLINE FOR THIRD YEAR

the third straight annual drop in death row admissions, from 229 in 2000, comes as capital punishment faces renewed scrutiny because so many death row inmates - 44 since 1994 - have been exonerated.
Because of the declining number of death sentences, the death row population fell for the first time since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, from 3,601 in 2000 to 3,581 in 2001. Executions were also down for the second straight year, from 85 in 2000 to 66 in 2001.
The Justice Department´s Bureau of Justice Statistics’ figures, updated as of Dec. 31, 2001, show that the 63 men and three women executed included 48 whites, 17 blacks and one American Indian. All were executed by injection.
The number of blacks put to death fell sharply from 35 in 2000 to 17 last year. Groups opposed to the death penalty allege that racial bias plays a role in death penalty decisions. Blacks make up about 12 percent of the population, but the report found they made up 43 percent of the death row population at the end of 2001.
Among the 38 US states that have capital punishment, California has 603 inmates on death row, followed by Texas with 453, Florida with 372 and Pennsylvania with 241.
Oklahoma executed the most people in 2001, with 18, followed by 17 put to death in Texas and seven in Missouri.
In all, executions were carried out in 2001 by 15 of the 38 states that have a death penalty. The federal government executed two men, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and drug lord and murderer Juan Raul Garza.
Preliminary statistics for this year show that Texas conducted 33 of the 68 executions nationwide.
Some other key statistics from the report:
--The average prison stay for those executed in 2001 was 11 years and 10 months, or about five months longer than the year before.
--Three states housed 40 percent of all death row inmates at the end of 2001: California, Texas, and Florida. New Hampshire was the only capital punishment state with no one on death row.
--The youngest person on death row in 2001 was 19, the oldest 86.
--More whites than blacks were sentenced to death -- 1,989 whites, 1,538 blacks.
--There were 51 women on death row, compared with 36 a decade ago.
Capital punishment methods are changing, too. By 2001, 36 states had authorized lethal injection as the method of execution, compared with 22 a decade earlier. Since 1977, 584 of the 749 executions, or about 78 percent, have been by injection.
Yet some states still authorize, in certain circumstances, electrocution, use of gas, hanging and -- in Idaho, Oklahoma and Utah -- death by firing squad.
Ninety people had their death sentences removed or overturned by the courts in 2001, with Florida leading the way with 11. Of the 90, 46 inmates now are serving life sentences, and most of the others were awaiting new trials or sentencing hearings.
Nineteen death row inmates died while awaiting execution.
Seventy-seven of the death row inmates for whom the date of arrest was available were 17 or younger at the time of the arrest.
During 2001, 10 states also revised their death penalty laws, with five states excluding mentally retarded offenders from execution and two adding aggravating circumstances to their existing statutes.