News

EDITORIALS: Newspapers Stress Findings from DPIC’s 2015 Year End Report

By Death Penalty Information Center

Posted on Jan 04, 2016 | Updated on Sep 25, 2024

Several news­pa­pers across the coun­try fea­tured themes from DPIC’s 2015 Year End Report in edi­to­ri­als and opin­ion pieces at the end of December:

“Once broad­ly accept­ed, cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is increas­ing­ly a fringe prac­tice. A hand­ful of states con­duct near­ly all exe­cu­tions. Four — Texas, Missouri, Georgia and Florida — car­ried out 93 per­cent of them in 2015. Sixty-three per­cent of new death sen­tences came from a mere 2 per­cent of U.S. coun­ties, a group with a his­to­ry of dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly using the death penalty.Bad pol­i­cy encour­ages this sort of excess: Three states — Alabama, Delaware and Florida — do not require juries to be unan­i­mous when rec­om­mend­ing a death sen­tence. A quar­ter of new sen­tences came from split juries in these states.”

“Not only did exe­cu­tions drop in 2015, but the num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced to death also hit an his­toric low, the cen­ter said. That could be due to a grow­ing skep­ti­cism by jurors of a sys­tem sus­cep­ti­ble to manip­u­la­tion through coerced tes­ti­mo­ny or oth­er mis­con­duct…— or there could be some oth­er rea­son for a decline in con­vic­tions on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment charges…What is clear is that there’s no cor­rect­ing an exe­cu­tion if lat­er evi­dence shows the pros­e­cu­tion was wrong…Abolition is the direc­tion of the future, and the U.S. should join.”

“[T]he fact that new death sen­tences were at an all-time low in Texas this year is rea­son to applaud…Texas’ declines mir­ror num­bers across the nation. According to the Death Penalty Information Center’s year-end report, death sen­tences dropped 33 per­cent from 2014, with 49 peo­ple being sen­tenced to death this year. Just six states car­ried out exe­cu­tions, the fewest since 1998…Confidence in the system’s integri­ty is wan­ing. It should only fol­low that sup­port for the death penal­ty follows suit.”
“In 2015, in fact, oth­er­wise proud­ly lib­er­al California led the nation in death sen­tences with 14, even as the nation­al num­ber dropped to 49, the fewest since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed in 1976, accord­ing to the Death Penalty Information Center. Of California’s death sen­tences, eight were in Riverside County (includ­ing five of the eight Latinos sen­tenced to death nation­wide), plus three in Los Angeles and one in Orange…If we’re going to have the death penal­ty, shouldn’t it be at least some­what con­sis­tent across the state?”

“As Florida becomes more iso­lat­ed in its admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty, the state is get­ting deserved scruti­ny for prob­lems with the prac­tice. A year-end report from the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center found just three states — Alabama, California and Florida — account­ed for more than half of the nation’s new death sen­tences in 2015. More than a quar­ter of this year’s death sen­tences were imposed by Florida and Alabama after non-unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tions of death — a prac­tice allowed in just those two states and Delaware. …As Florida offi­cials have pushed to speed up the pace of exe­cu­tions, the Death Penalty Information Center found the rest of the coun­try is head­ing in the oppo­site direc­tion. A dozen states haven’t exe­cut­ed any­one in at least nine years, while 18 states and the District of Columbia have out­lawed the death penal­ty alto­geth­er. … As most oth­er states move away from the death penal­ty, it is long past time for Florida to fol­low their lead.”

“A Reading Eagle inves­ti­ga­tion in October found near­ly one in five Pennsylvania inmates sen­tenced to death the past decade were rep­re­sent­ed by attor­neys dis­ci­plined for pro­fes­sion­al mis­con­duct at some point in their careers. And the major­i­ty of these dis­ci­plined attor­neys had been found by Pennsylvania courts to be inef­fec­tive in at least one cap­i­tal case. More than 150 inmates sen­tenced to death in the U.S. have been exon­er­at­ed since 1973, accord­ing to data com­piled by the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington. Sooner or lat­er an inno­cent per­son will be exe­cut­ed, if it has­n’t hap­pened already…It is time to end the death penal­ty in Pennsylvania.” (This edi­to­r­i­al announced the end of the Eagle’s pri­or posi­tion sup­port­ing the death penal­ty under limited circumstances.)


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(Editorial, ​“The death penalty’s demise can’t come soon enough,” The Washington Post, December 30, 2015; Editorial, ​“The shame of state-spon­sored killing,” The Los Angeles Times, December 22, 2015; Editorial, ​“Editorial: Could Texas be los­ing its appetite for the death penal­ty?,” The Dallas Morning News, December 30, 2015; F. Rhee, ​“A dead­ly dis­par­i­ty in jus­tice,” The Sacramento Bee, December 30, 2015; Editorial, ​“Editorial: Florida is out of step with exe­cu­tions,” The Gainesville Sun, December 31, 2015; Editorial, ​“Editorial: It is time to abol­ish the death penal­ty in Pennsylvania,” The Reading Eagle, December 17, 2015.) See Editorials and DPIC’s 2015 Year End Report.
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