A recent arti­cle by Alex Kotlowitz in the New York Times Magazine exam­ined why jurors who affirmed their will­ing­ness to impose a death sen­tence are increas­ing­ly vot­ing for life in cap­i­tal cas­es. The article noted:

Over the past few years, detec­tive work and advances in DNA tech­nol­o­gy have uncov­ered a fright­en­ing­ly high num­ber of wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed, espe­cial­ly on death row. But there may be anoth­er, albeit qui­eter, rev­o­lu­tion tak­ing place, out of view, in jury rooms. The num­ber of death sen­tences hand­ed down has dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly, from a mod­ern-day peak of 319 in 1996 to 229 in 2000, and then to 155 in 2001. And a study released just last month report­ed that in 15 of the last 16 fed­er­al cap­i­tal tri­als, jurors chose life sen­tences over death.

There are a num­ber of fac­tors at work here. In ear­ly 2000, Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, stag­gered by the num­ber of wrong­ful con­vic­tions in his state, declared a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. It received a good deal of nation­al press and undoubt­ed­ly made some pros­e­cu­tors and jurors more cau­tious. (Last January, Ryan went beyond a mora­to­ri­um; he par­doned four inmates and com­mut­ed the sen­tences of the oth­er 167 on Illinois’s death row.) Additionally, the mur­der rate has been in a steady decline, though that has been going on for some time.

There are two fac­tors, how­ev­er, that more than any­thing else may help explain the decline in death-penal­ty sen­tences. One is the increas­ing avail­abil­i­ty of life with­out parole as an option, which all but three death-penal­ty states now offer. In polls, three-fourths of Americans say they believe in the death penal­ty. But when asked whether they’d sup­port cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment if life with­out parole was an option, the num­ber is reduced to half.

The oth­er con­trib­u­tor, per­haps tougher to mea­sure, is a devel­op­ment over the last decade: an increas­ing num­ber of defense attor­neys have become more skilled and resource­ful in per­suad­ing jurors that the lives of their clients are worth saving.

(New York Times Magazine, July 6, 2003). See Innocence and Life Without Parole.

Citation Guide