The Death Penalty Information Center’s Year End Report for 2008 record­ed 37 exe­cu­tions for the year that ends today. That is a 12% drop from the 42 exe­cu­tions in 2007. However, based on exe­cu­tions already sched­uled for 2009, the com­ing year may see an increase. There are 23 exe­cu­tions sched­uled for the first five months of 2009, and more dates are like­ly to be added. As was true in 2008, almost all the exe­cu­tions sched­uled are in the south and about half (12 of 23) are in Texas. Although the time between sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion has grown longer, the size of death row has remained rel­a­tive­ly sta­ble and many inmates are run­ning out of appeals.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report­ed that the aver­age time between sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion for those exe­cut­ed in 2007 (lat­est fig­ures avail­able) was 12.7 years, the longest for any year since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976. The aver­age time between sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion for all exe­cu­tions car­ried out since 1976 was about 10.5 years. At the start of 2008, there were 3,309 peo­ple on death row, a decline of just over 1% from a year ago. BJS report­ed 115 death sen­tences in 2007, the low­est num­ber for any year since 1976. DPIC’s pro­jec­tions indi­cate a sim­i­lar num­ber of death sen­tences for 2008.

(Posted Dec. 31, 2008). See Time on Death Row and DPIC’s 2008 Year End Report.

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