The Bureau of Justice Statistics has just released the 2005 ver­sion of its annu­al report on the death penal­ty in the U.S. The report notes that both the num­ber of death sen­tences and the size of death row were down for 2005, and that this rep­re­sents a trend over the past 5 years. The report states that there were 60 exe­cu­tions in 2005, all by lethal injec­tion, and that the time between sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion was longer in 2005 than in 2004.


California had the most death sen­tences (23) in 2005, fol­lowed by Florida (15), Texas (14) and Alabama (12). Together these states account­ed for half of those sen­tenced to death in 2005. California had the largest num­ber on death row (646) and Texas had the most exe­cu­tions (19) in 2005.

(U.S. Dept. of Justice, Capital Punishment, 2005 (pub. December 2006)). See also DPIC’s 2005 Year End Report. DPIC will be releas­ing its 2006 Year End Report by the end of this week, and it will have infor­ma­tion on the death penal­ty in 2006. See Sentencing.

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