The Death Penatly Information Center has issued a new report, Innocence and the Crisis in the American Death Penalty, cataloging 116 cases of former death row inmates who have been exonerated in 25 states since 1973. The report also notes that as the number of innocent people freed from death row has risen and become more public in recent years, there has been a dramatic drop in death sentences around the country. The number of death sentences, which have been steadily dropping since 1998, are now about 50% less than they were in the late 1990s. DPIC uses the objective standards of the justice system in determining whether a case should be included in its innocence list. (N.Y. Times, Sept. 15, 2004). See “From DPIC” on the Center’s home page; see also Innocence.

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