Indiana is sen­tenc­ing few­er peo­ple to death and exe­cut­ing at its slow­est pace in 15 years. It has gone two years with­out an exe­cu­tion for the first time since the mid-1990’s. ​“We’re run­ning out of death row inmates,” said Clark County Prosecutor Steven Stewart, who main­tains a pro-death penal­ty Web site. Prosecutors attribute the decline to time and mon­ey issues, part of a nation­al trend that has prompt­ed sev­er­al states to move towards abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty. Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Stan Levco said he has more reser­va­tions about seek­ing the death penal­ty than he did 15 years ago due to the ris­ing costs. ​“There’s more than a few small coun­ties that have filed death penal­ty cas­es who after they’ve gone through it for a while have just thrown up their hands and have said, ​‘I give.“ ‘ While most offi­cials expect exe­cu­tions to resume, Indiana defense attor­ney Alan Freedman finds the two-year absence of exe­cu­tions to be a sign of things to come, say­ing, ​“The death penal­ty in Indiana will become an oddity.”

(T. Coyne, ​“Indiana Executions at slow­est pace in 15 years,” Chicago Tribune, June 14, 2009). Over the past six years, Indiana has aver­aged less than one death sen­tence per year. See Sentencing and Costs.

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