EDITORIALS: Major Papers Around the Country Tracked DPIC’s Year End Report

The infor­ma­tion and analy­sis in DPIC’s recent 2010 Year-End Report were report­ed in hun­dreds of media out­lets around the coun­try. Among the papers writ­ing edi­to­ri­als on the trends cit­ed in the report were the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Colorado’s Aurora Sentinel. The Times’ edi­to­r­i­al, ​“Still Cruel, Less Usual,” not­ed, ​“A report released this month by the Death Penalty Information Center count­ed 46 exe­cu­tions in 2010. That is near­ly 12 per­cent few­er than a year ago, and down sharply from the 85 exe­cu­tions of 2000.… The cen­ter sug­gest­ed a num­ber of rea­sons for the decline, includ­ing that pros­e­cu­tors and the pub­lic are grap­pling with the wrench­ing prob­lem of inno­cence. The irre­versible pun­ish­ment of death requires a fool­proof jus­tice sys­tem, but grow­ing num­bers of DNA exon­er­a­tions in recent years sug­gest that it is far from that.” The Post​’s edi­to­r­i­al, ​“46 Executions Too Many,” also cit­ed the costs of cap­i­tal cas­es as a sig­nif­i­cant con­cern: ​“Litigating a cap­i­tal case is expen­sive — on aver­age $3 mil­lion, accord­ing to the [D]eath [P]enalty [Information] [C]enter — and exceeds the costs of impris­on­ing an inmate for decades.” The Sentinel​’s edi­to­r­i­al, ​“Time to Rid Colorado of Death Penatly,” cit­ed some of the same sta­tis­tics and trends and urged the state leg­is­la­ture to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment: ​“Colorado state law­mak­ers will almost cer­tain­ly pon­der a bill next year that would end the death penal­ty here. Fellow leg­is­la­tors should give that mea­sure seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion, per­haps ask­ing vot­ers whether to end the prac­tice and allow the state to join the rest of the civ­i­lized world.” Read full edi­to­ri­als below.

New York Times
Still Cruel, Less Usual
December 31, 2010

The tide con­tin­ued ebbing on the death penal­ty this year. States are putting few­er peo­ple to death, and juries con­tin­ue to favor the pun­ish­ment of life with­out parole over exe­cu­tion when giv­en the choice. A report released this month by the Death Penalty Information Center count­ed 46 exe­cu­tions in 2010. That is near­ly 12 per­cent few­er than a year ago, and down sharply from the 85 exe­cu­tions of 2000.

Forty-six state-com­mit­ted killings are 46 too many, but the drop was even felt in Texas, by far the nation­al leader in exe­cu­tions. It killed 17 pris­on­ers this year, 29 per­cent few­er than last year. The cen­ter, which oppos­es the death penal­ty, found that while juries imposed about the same num­ber of death sen­tences this year as last — 114 in 2010, 112 in 2009 — that rate was still only about half what it was in the 1990s.

The cen­ter sug­gest­ed a num­ber of rea­sons for the decline, includ­ing that pros­e­cu­tors and the pub­lic are grap­pling with the wrench­ing prob­lem of inno­cence. The irre­versible pun­ish­ment of death requires a fool­proof jus­tice sys­tem, but grow­ing num­bers of DNA exon­er­a­tions in recent years sug­gest that it is far from that.

What tem­pers the results is that some of the reluc­tance had noth­ing to do with enlight­en­ment. Death rows and exe­cu­tions are expen­sive, and cash-strapped states seem more will­ing to inves­ti­gate alter­na­tives. And exe­cu­tions were post­poned or can­celed this year in Arkansas, California, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Kentucky sim­ply because of a short­age of a lethal-injection drug.

Still there was good news in 2010. Electoral vic­to­ries by can­di­dates who oppose the death penal­ty, like the new gov­er­nors of California and New York and the re-elect­ed gov­er­nor of Massachusetts, sug­gest that it’s not a vot­ers’ lit­mus test or polit­i­cal third rail.

A judge in a state court in Texas, of all places, grant­ed a hear­ing this month on whether the state’s cap­i­tal-pun­ish­ment law is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because of the high risk of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent. While the hear­ing has been tem­porar­i­ly halt­ed, promi­nent for­mer gov­er­nors, pros­e­cu­tors and leg­is­la­tors have urged that it con­tin­ue. And in an essay this month in The New York Review of Books, John Paul Stevens, the retired Supreme Court jus­tice, argued that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was nei­ther fair nor an effective deterrent.

We can only hope the coun­try is clos­er to putting its shame­ful exper­i­ment in state-spon­sored death behind it.

(“Still Cruel, Less Usual,” New York Times, December 31, 2010).

The Washington Post
46 exe­cu­tions too many
Monday, December 27, 2010; A14

THERE IS REASON for hope when no new death sen­tences are imposed in death penal­ty states, as hap­pened in Virginia and Georgia in 2010. Also heart­en­ing are drops in the num­ber of exe­cu­tions in places such as Texas, which has long been the nation’s leader in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment but put to death sev­en few­er inmates this year than in 2009.

The down­ward trend is wel­come. We hope that it is head­ing toward abo­li­tion. Only then will there be cer­tain­ty that the state has not put inno­cents to death.

Nationwide, the num­ber of exe­cu­tions fell from 52 in 2009 to 46 in 2010, accord­ing to a report by the Death Penalty Information Center, a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that stud­ies cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Texas was respon­si­ble for 17, more than twice as many as any oth­er state; Virginia, whose 108 exe­cu­tions since 1976 are sec­ond only to Texas, car­ried out three executions.

The report reaf­firms the trend away from cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The num­ber of death sen­tences has fall­en by almost 50 per­cent since 2000, when 224 inmates were sen­tenced to death. In 2010, 114 death sen­tences were imposed. Although 35 states allow cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, only 12 car­ried out exe­cu­tions this year.

The nation’s grow­ing skep­ti­cism over cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is fueled by sev­er­al fac­tors. Juries appear less will­ing to impose death sen­tences when giv­en the choice of impos­ing a sen­tence of life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. Most death penal­ty states offer this option, includ­ing Texas, which passed such a law in 2005. Litigating a cap­i­tal case is expen­sive — on aver­age $3 mil­lion, accord­ing to the death penal­ty cen­ter — and exceeds the costs of impris­on­ing an inmate for decades.

Most impor­tant, there is the con­cern over pos­si­bly putting an inno­cent per­son to death. Since 1973, some 130 death row inmates have been exon­er­at­ed, large­ly through the use of DNA evi­dence. Yet not every state allows death row inmates access to such testing.

Some states, most recent­ly New Mexico and New Jersey, have abol­ished the death penal­ty. Maryland, which has five inmates on its death row and has car­ried out only five exe­cu­tions since 1976, came tan­ta­liz­ing­ly close in 2009. State law­mak­ers should renew the effort when they recon­vene in 2011.

(“46 Executions Too Many,” The Washington Post, December 27, 2010).

After decades of increas­ing­ly dis­turb­ing news about the death penal­ty in the United States, final­ly a spot of hope.

The num­ber of exe­cu­tions dropped 12 per­cent this year, accord­ing to an Associated Press sto­ry, tak­ing the rate of death sen­tences to historic lows.

There’s a host of fac­tors con­tribut­ing to the drop in exe­cu­tions, but some of the rea­sons are obvi­ous. Juries are increas­ing­ly loathe to hand out the death penal­ty because of the rash of cas­es where slop­py, neg­li­gent and in some cas­es cor­rupt pros­e­cu­tions have put the wrong guy behind bars.

In Texas alone there have been 12 exon­er­a­tions of death-row inmates since 1978, free­ing men who were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed. Probably one of the biggest rea­sons for the rate of exe­cu­tions has been news about the exor­bi­tant cost of keep­ing pris­on­ers on death row for years, and sometimes decades.

In Colorado, tax­pay­ers shell out about $1 mil­lion a year to keep two or three inmates on death row.

Another fac­tor in turn­ing Americans against the death penal­ty are the stom­ach-turn­ing sto­ries about hav­ing to dig for veins in the arms of pris­on­ers for hours to inject them with lethal drugs, or the drugs not work­ing, or in one case, an IV com­ing undone and hav­ing to post­pone the exe­cu­tion so it could all be started again.

It’s time to end the bar­bar­ic prac­tice here in Colorado.

The United Nations and oth­ers have stud­ied the issue relent­less­ly dur­ing the past four decades. The stud­ies show that coun­tries that exe­cute crim­i­nals don’t have any bet­ter cap­i­tal crime rate than those who lock up the crim­i­nals for good. And the near-dai­ly exe­cu­tions in Texas cer­tain­ly don’t keep res­i­dents there from killing each other.

In fact, lin­ing them up on death row puts us in sor­ry com­pa­ny with Iran, Iraq, China, North Korea and Syria.

Colorado and the United States is little better.

We are con­sid­ered bar­bar­ic mon­sters by peo­ple in Canada, Germany, England and all of Europe, Australia, South Africa, and even places such as Macedonia, Venezuela and Colombia. Those are coun­tries that once imposed the death penal­ty but real­ized that it only makes for revenge, not jus­tice, and that it’s all too easy to kill innocent people.

Colorado state law­mak­ers will almost cer­tain­ly pon­der a bill next year that would end the death penal­ty here. Fellow leg­is­la­tors should give that mea­sure seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion, per­haps ask­ing vot­ers whether to end the prac­tice and allow the state to join the rest of the civilized world.

(“Time to Rid Colorado of Death Penalty,” Aurora Sentinel (edi­to­r­i­al), Dec. 21, 2010). Read more Editorials on the death penalty.