The Death Penalty Information Center’s 2004 Year End Report not­ing the declines in death sen­tences, exe­cu­tions, and the num­ber of peo­ple on death row was cov­ered by about 200 news out­lets through­out the U.S. and over­seas. Some news­pa­pers took the occa­sion to edi­to­ri­al­ize about the state of the death penal­ty:

Detroit Free Press

The death penal­ty, thank­ful­ly, is mak­ing its own slow demise in the United States. Given the legal, moral and eco­nom­ic prob­lems with the death penal­ty, all 38 states that allow it should place a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, as Illinois has done.

…
The prac­ti­cal and moral prob­lems of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ought to be deci­sive. DNA evi­dence has already shown that a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple on death row – most of them poor or minori­ties – were wrong­ly con­vict­ed. Even one would have been too many.
…
Nothing, includ­ing com­mon sense, sug­gests that the death penal­ty deters, either. Indeed, non-death-penal­ty states have had low­er mur­der rates than those using it, reports the Death Penalty Information Center. The mur­der rate increased last year in Texas and Oklahoma, the two states car­ry­ing out the most exe­cu­tions.

Most mur­der­ers don’t con­sid­er con­se­quences. If they did, they wouldn’t com­mit a crime that car­ries a penal­ty of life in prison with­out parole. Such a sen­tence is the most just, prac­ti­cal and eco­nom­i­cal sen­tence for those con­vict­ed of the most heinous crimes. And unlike the death penal­ty, it is reversible in the case of an inno­cent per­son wrong­ly con­vict­ed.

(Detroit Free Press, December 20, 2004).

The Daily Camera (Colorado)

The end­less cov­er­age of [Scott] Peterson’s case did focus nation­al atten­tion on the issue of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment,… [b]ut it tend­ed to obscure rather than illu­mi­nate the larg­er sto­ry: a con­tin­u­ing decline in the num­ber of exe­cu­tions in the United States.
…
[E]vidence sug­gests that the decline in exe­cu­tions is a long-range trend, not an aber­ra­tion. More than ever, cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was a region­al phe­nom­e­non in 2004, when 85 per­cent of all exe­cu­tions took place in one area of the coun­try (the South) and 40 per­cent took place in one state (Texas). Whole areas of the United States are aban­don­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment alto­geth­er or reserved it for iso­lat­ed and tru­ly extreme cas­es.
…
High pro­file cas­es make head­lines; long-range devel­op­ments often do not. In the case of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, how­ev­er, the slow with­er­ing of sup­port is too clear and sig­nif­i­cant to ignore. With each pass­ing year, more Americans are ques­tion­ing the death penal­ty – and few­er pris­on­ers are dying at the hands of the state. That’s a trend well worth encour­ag­ing.

(The Daily Camera, December 27, 2004).

Lancaster Eagle-Gazette (Ohio)

Ohio exe­cut­ed more peo­ple in 2004 than in the pre­vi­ous year, the reverse of a nation­al trend toward few­er exe­cu­tions, a study says.
…
Nationally, there were 59 exe­cu­tions in 2004, com­pared to 98 in 1999.

Ohio’s total this year, how­ev­er, was the high­est since 1949 when 15 were put to death.
…
The num­ber of death sen­tences statewide con­tin­ues to decline from 18 in 1996 to five this year.

More and more peo­ple across the coun­try would say that decline is the right way to go and the death sen­tence should be elim­i­nat­ed com­plete­ly.

Changing pub­lic atti­tudes toward the death sen­tence should prompt law­mak­ers to take a renewed seri­ous look at the con­tro­ver­sial and emo­tion­al issue.

(Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, December 19, 2004).

See DPIC’s 2004 Year End Report. See also, Editorials.

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