The Death Penalty Information Center has released its 13th annu­al Year End Report, not­ing that exe­cu­tions have dropped to a 13-year low as a de fac­to mora­to­ri­um took hold in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s exam­i­na­tion of lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures. Death sen­tences have also dropped con­sid­er­ably in recent years. DPIC pro­ject­ed 110 new death sen­tences in 2007 — the low­est num­ber since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976, and a 60% drop since 1999. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 115 new inmates were received on death row in 2006. In 1999, there 284 admit­ted to death row.

The report notes that the 42 exe­cu­tions this year occurred in only a few states, with 40 out of the 50 states in the U.S. not hav­ing any exe­cu­tions this year. Almost all (86%) of the exe­cu­tions in 2007 were in the South, and 62% of the exe­cu­tions took place in one state, Texas. Executions have declined 57% since 1999.

The report also cites a num­ber of impor­tant new devel­op­ments, includ­ing the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in New Jersey this month. Governor Corzine signed the abo­li­tion leg­is­la­tion on December 17, after com­mut­ing the death sen­tences of the 8 peo­ple on death row to life with­out parole sen­tences. New York has also been removed from the list of death penal­ty states, bring­ing that total to 14 states. Three exon­er­a­tions of death row inmates occurred in 2007: one each in Oklahoma, Tennessee, and North Carolina. The report con­tains state­ments from a vari­ety of law enforce­ment per­son­nel, vic­tims, edi­to­r­i­al boards, and judges voic­ing seri­ous con­cerns about the death penal­ty.
(Death Penalty Information Center, post­ed December 19, 2007). Read the 2007 Year End Report. See also arti­cles about the report in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and CNN​.com.

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