The Bureau of Justice Statistics recent­ly released its annu­al review of the death penal­ty in the U.S., focus­ing on 2011. The report not­ed the con­tin­ued decline in the use of the death penal­ty in recent years. In 2011, 80 new inmates were received under sen­tence of death, the low­est num­ber since 1973, and a 27% decrease from the year before. Executions also declined to 43, com­pared with 46 in 2010. The aver­age time between sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion in 2011 was 16.5 years, 20 months longer than for those exe­cut­ed in 2010. The num­ber of peo­ple on death row in the U.S. dropped to 3,082, mark­ing the eleventh con­sec­u­tive year in which the size of death row decreased. Florida, California, Texas, and Arizona account­ed for half of all inmates sen­tenced to death. The report not­ed that in 2011 Illinois became the lat­est state to abol­ish the death penalty.

(Bureau of Justice Statistics, Capital Punishment, 2011 — Statistical Tables, July 2013). For infor­ma­tion on the death penal­ty in 2012, see DPIC’s Year End Report. See Death Row, Sentencing and Studies.

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