As we reach the mid-point of the year, exe­cu­tions and new death sen­tences are on pace to remain near his­toric lows in 2017, con­tin­u­ing the long-term his­toric decline in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment across the United States. As of June 30, six states have car­ried out 13 exe­cu­tions, with 30 oth­er exe­cu­tions that had been sched­uled for that peri­od halt­ed by judi­cial stays or injunc­tions, guber­na­to­r­i­al reprieves or com­mu­ta­tion, or resched­uled. By con­trast, at the mid­point of 2016, five states had car­ried out 14 exe­cu­tions, and 25 oth­er exe­cu­tions had been halt­ed. 12 exe­cu­tions are cur­rent­ly sched­uled for the rest of 2017, with 8 oth­ers already halt­ed, and sev­er­al more death war­rants are expect­ed to be issued. Depending on whether Ohio car­ries out the five exe­cu­tions pend­ing between now and December, DPIC antic­i­pates a slight increase in exe­cu­tions in the U.S. from 2016’s 26-year low. However, even with the spate of four exe­cu­tions car­ried out in Arkansas from April 20 – 27 — that state’s first exe­cu­tions since 2005 — there will like­ly be few­er exe­cu­tions in 2017 than in any oth­er year since 1990. New death sen­tences also remain near his­tor­i­cal­ly low lev­els. DPIC has con­firmed at least 16 new death sen­tences so far in 2017, a pace very close to the record-low 31 new death sen­tences imposed in 2016. Florida​’s aban­don­ment of non-unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tions of death and Alabama​’s repeal of judi­cial over­ride of jury rec­om­men­da­tions for life are expect­ed to sub­stan­tial­ly reduce the num­ber of new death sen­tences in those states. The death sen­tences of near­ly 100 Florida death-row pris­on­ers have been over­turned as a result of the state supreme court’s dec­la­ra­tion than non-unan­i­mous death sen­tences are uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, and courts in Delaware and Connecticut have con­tin­ued emp­ty­ing those state’s death rows after their death penal­ty statutes were declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Three peo­ple have been exon­er­at­ed from death row in 2017—Isaiah McCoy in Delaware, Rodricus Crawford in Louisiana, and Ralph Daniel Wright, Jr. in Florida — bring­ing the num­ber of death-row exon­er­a­tions in the U.S. since 1973 to 159. There have also been three grants of clemen­cy in the first half of 2017, bring­ing the nation­al total since 1976 to 283. President Barack Obama grant­ed clemen­cy to fed­er­al death-row pris­on­er Abelardo Arboleda Ortiz and mil­i­tary death-row pris­on­er Dwight Loving, and Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe grant­ed clemen­cy to Ivan Teleguz. All three are now serv­ing sen­tences of life with­out parole. The U.S. Supreme Court has issued three sig­nif­i­cant deci­sions in 2017 in favor of death-row pris­on­ers. On February 22, in Buck v. Davis, the Court grant­ed relief to Duane Buck due to racial­ly biased tes­ti­mo­ny on the issue of future dan­ger­ous­ness. A month lat­er, in Moore v. Texas, the Court unan­i­mous­ly struck down Texas’ out­lier prac­tice for deter­min­ing intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty in cap­i­tal cas­es. In McWilliams v. Dunn, the Court found on June 19 that James McWilliams’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were vio­lat­ed when Alabama failed to pro­vide him assis­tance of an inde­pen­dent men­tal-health expert. The Court ruled against Texas death-row pris­on­er Erick Davila on June 26.

Other states that have car­ried out exe­cu­tions so far in 2017 are Texas (4), Alabama (2), Georgia (1), Missouri (1), and Virginia (1).

(Posted by DPIC, June 30, 2017.) See Executions, Innocence, Clemency, and U.S. Supreme Court.

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