In a chap­ter from the recent­ly released American Bar Association pub­li­ca­tion, The State of Criminal Justice 2016, Ronald J. Tabak, chair of the Death Penalty Committee of the ABA’s Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, describes sig­nif­i­cant trends and recent cas­es relat­ed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Tabak high­lights the ongo­ing declines in death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions across the United States, as well as the increas­ing con­cen­tra­tion of the death penal­ty in a small num­ber of juris­dic­tions. The chap­ter details the lethal injec­tion con­tro­ver­sies that have slowed exe­cu­tions in many states and halt­ed them in oth­ers. It also includes sec­tions on key Supreme Court cas­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly Glossip v. Gross, and on inno­cence, empha­siz­ing recent exon­er­a­tions. Tabak con­cludes with a pre­dic­tion: ​“As more and more peo­ple rec­og­nize that our cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem is incon­sis­tent with both con­ser­v­a­tive and lib­er­al prin­ci­ples, and with com­mon sense, the oppor­tu­ni­ty for its abo­li­tion through­out the United States will arrive.”

(R. Tabak, ​“Capital Punishment,” The State of Criminal Justice 2016, June 2016.) See Studies.

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