DPIC 2019 Year End Report: Death Penalty Erodes Further As New Hampshire Abolishes and California Imposes Moratorium

The death penal­ty has now dis­ap­peared from whole regions of the coun­try and con­tin­ues to erode in oth­ers, accord­ing to the Death Penalty Information Center’s 2019 Year End Report. With New Hampshire’s repeal of its cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statute in May, 21 states have now abol­ished the death penal­ty, with nine hav­ing done so since 2004. In March, California Governor Gavin Newsom imposed a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions on the nation’s largest death row, join­ing gov­er­nors in Oregon, Colorado, and Pennsylvania in for­mal­ly halt­ing exe­cu­tions in their states. Half of U.S. states have now either abol­ished the death penal­ty or halt­ed exe­cu­tions. Executions and new death sen­tences remained near his­toric lows for the fifth con­sec­u­tive year. For the first time since Gallup began ask­ing the ques­tion in 1985, a major­i­ty of respon­dents (60%) believe that life in prison with­out parole is a bet­ter approach for pun­ish­ing mur­der than the death penalty.

Innocence remained a cru­cial con­cern in 2019, as three* peo­ple were exon­er­at­ed from death row. Two of these exon­er­a­tions occurred more than 40 years after the con­vic­tions. ​“2019 came close to being the year of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent,” said Robert Dunham, DPIC’s exec­u­tive direc­tor ​“Two pris­on­ers were exe­cut­ed this year despite sub­stan­tial doubts as to their guilt, and James Dailey in Florida and Rodney Reed in Texas came close to exe­cu­tion despite com­pelling evi­dence of inno­cence.” Domineque Ray was exe­cut­ed in Alabama after a con­vic­tion based sole­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of a wit­ness who was expe­ri­enc­ing delu­sions and hal­lu­ci­na­tions when he accused Ray. No phys­i­cal evi­dence linked Ray to the crime. Larry Swearingen was exe­cut­ed in Texas on the basis of what his attor­ney called foren­sic ​“quack­ery.” Eight foren­sic experts con­tra­dict­ed tri­al tes­ti­mo­ny on the tim­ing of the victim’s death, con­clud­ing that the vic­tim had been killed while Swearingen was in police cus­tody. ​“Our courts and pub­lic offi­cials too fre­quent­ly flat out ignore poten­tial­ly dead­ly mis­takes, and often take steps to obstruct the truth,” Dunham said. ​“That is one of the rea­sons why pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty con­tin­ues to fall.”

The 22 exe­cu­tions this year belied the myth that the death penal­ty is reserved for the ​“worst of the worst.” At least 19 of the 22 pris­on­ers who were exe­cut­ed this year had one or more of the fol­low­ing impair­ments: sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence of men­tal ill­ness (9); evi­dence of brain injury, devel­op­men­tal brain dam­age, or an IQ in the intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled range (8); or chron­ic seri­ous child­hood trau­ma, neglect, and/​or abuse (13). Four were under age 21 at the time of their crime, and five pre­sent­ed claims that a co-defen­dant was the more cul­pa­ble per­pe­tra­tor. Every per­son exe­cut­ed this year had one of the impair­ments list­ed above, an inno­cence claim, and/​or demon­stra­bly faulty legal process.

The death penal­ty became increas­ing­ly geo­graph­i­cal­ly iso­lat­ed. With New Hampshire’s abo­li­tion, no New England state has the death penal­ty, and the only north­east­ern state with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment — Pennsylvania — has a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. Indiana had its tenth year with­out an exe­cu­tion, mak­ing it the 32^nd state with no death penal­ty at all or no exe­cu­tions in more than a decade. There were record-low death sen­tences in the American West. The entire region imposed only four death sen­tences (three in California and one in Arizona), half of the pre­vi­ous record low of eight. For the fifth straight year, no state west of Texas con­duct­ed an execution.

Fewer than one per­cent of all U.S. coun­ties imposed death sen­tences, and only two coun­ties — Cuyahoga, Ohio (3) and Riverside, California (2) — imposed more than one. The five death sen­tences imposed in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) over the past two years are more than in any oth­er coun­ty. The coun­ty had imposed just one death sen­tence in the five years before Michael O’Malley became County Prosecutor in 2017.