Death Penalty Sentences Have Dropped Considerably in the 2000s

Compared to the 1990s, there has been a marked decline in death sen­tences in the U.S. since 2000. Every region of the coun­try and every state that aver­aged one or more death sen­tences per year have seen a decline in the annu­al num­ber of death sen­tences. The chart below com­pares the annu­al num­ber of death sen­tences in each state in the 1990s with the 2000s. North Carolina, California, Florida, and Texas expe­ri­enced the great­est declines in sen­tenc­ing. This issue and oth­ers are addressed in the Death Penalty Information Center’s Year End Report, released December 11, 2008.

In 2008, DPIC con­duct­ed a com­par­a­tive analy­sis of death sen­tences imposed across the United States in the 1990s ver­sus the first decade of the 2000s. We found that, on a per­cent­age basis, death sen­tences in the coun­try dropped 62% between 1998 and 2007. Doubts about the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the death penal­ty cou­pled with the avail­abil­i­ty of life-with­out-parole sen­tences like­ly con­tributed to that drop. The over­all drop in death sen­tences dur­ing the 2000s occurred even though the mur­der rate remained approx­i­mate­ly con­stant dur­ing the sev­en years of the decade that we stud­ied. In 2007, the last year for which data were avail­able, the nation­al mur­der rate was 5.6 mur­ders per 100,000 peo­ple, a small decrease from 5.7 in 2006 and a small increase from 5.5 in 2000. 

A notable excep­tion to this pat­tern was the fed­er­al death penal­ty, where the aver­age num­ber of death sen­tences had increased since 2000. Several impor­tant fac­tors con­tributed to the increase in fed­er­al death sen­tences dur­ing this peri­od. First, the fed­er­al death penal­ty law was expand­ed in 1994, so more fed­er­al offens­es were death-eli­gi­ble in the 2000s than in the ear­ly 1990s. Second, Presidential admin­is­tra­tions changed, and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, inau­gu­rat­ed in 2001, put an empha­sis on using the fed­er­al law more broadly.

See Sentencing. Posted Dec. 19, 2008.