When Indiana exe­cut­ed Matthew Wrinkles on December 11, 2009, it was the twen­ti­eth exe­cu­tion car­ried out since the state rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty in May of 1973. It was also the last exe­cu­tion the state has carried out. 

A decade lat­er, Indiana has now joined the list of 32 states that no longer have the death penal­ty or have not exe­cut­ed any­one in at least 10 years. (Click here to enlarge map.) No Indiana jury has sen­tenced a defen­dant to die since 2013.

Although the United States has car­ried out more than 1,500 exe­cu­tions in the 42 years since exe­cu­tions resumed in the coun­try in 1977, exe­cu­tions are rare or non-exis­tent in most of the nation. 21 states and the District of Columbia have abol­ished cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, and an addi­tion­al 11 states, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, and the U.S. mil­i­tary have not con­duct­ed any exe­cu­tions in at least 10 years. A DPIC review of U.S. exe­cu­tion data has found that 84% of U.S. coun­ties have not had any exe­cu­tions in the past 50 years.

Indiana’s death-sen­tenc­ing decline began in 1989, after nine years in which the state aver­aged more than six death sen­tences per year. Death sen­tences aver­aged 2.6 per year in the 1990s and 0.9 in the first decade of this century. 

Huntington County Prosecutor Amy Richison, who chairs the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council’s cap­i­tal lit­i­ga­tion com­mit­tee, told the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette in August 2019 that sev­er­al prac­ti­cal con­sid­er­a­tions have con­tributed to the decline. First, she said, in 1993 the leg­is­la­ture made life with­out parole avail­able as an alter­na­tive to the death penal­ty. The cost and the length of the tri­al and appeal process has also played a role, she said. In an inter­view with the Indianapolis Star, Indiana Chief Federal Defender Monica Foster said, ​“We’re just not putting new peo­ple on death row because juries are reject­ing the death penal­ty when the gov­ern­ment files it…. I don’t think that there’s a real appetite for the death penal­ty in Indiana,” she said.

State Attorney General Curtis Hill and state cor­rec­tions per­son­nel attribute the pause in exe­cu­tions to the unavail­abil­i­ty of exe­cu­tion drugs. In a state­ment to the Star, the Department of Correction wrote: ​“This is the result of busi­ness deci­sions by phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sup­pli­ers who now decline pur­chase requests from the Indiana Department of Correction.” Hill blamed that on ​“a con­cert­ed effort, for a num­ber of years, by cer­tain groups to place pres­sures on phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies.” But in an inter­view with the Star, Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham said, ​“Pharmaceutical com­pa­nies uni­form­ly have said they don’t want their med­i­cines used to exe­cute pris­on­ers. And that shouldn’t be sur­pris­ing, because their cor­po­rate mis­sion is to cre­ate med­i­cines to save lives and improve lives and not to take lives.”

Wrinkles was exe­cut­ed for the mur­ders of his wife and her broth­er and sis­ter-in-law. He and his wife were in the mid­dle of a divorce and cus­tody dis­pute at the time. Wrinkles had been released from a psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal two weeks before the mur­ders and his moth­er unsuc­cess­ful­ly attempt­ed to have him com­mit­ted again after he was released. Wrinkles and the fam­i­ly mem­bers of the vic­tims appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show short­ly after his final appeals had been denied. At that time, his wife’s moth­er, Mary Winnecke, said, ​“I ask every­body to write the gov­er­nor to stop the death penal­ty because we’re not here to judge. You deserve to be in jail, but we don’t want you to die.”

The states of Louisiana and Utah are expect­ed to reach ten years with­out an exe­cu­tion in the first half of next year. Louisiana last car­ried out an exe­cu­tion on January 7, 2010 and Utah last put a pris­on­er to death on June 18, 2010.

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment unsuc­cess­ful­ly attempt­ed to resume exe­cu­tions this month, set­ting five exe­cu­tion dates for December 9, 2019 through January 15, 2020. A fed­er­al dis­trict court has issued a pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion tem­porar­i­ly halt­ing those exe­cu­tions and the U.S. Supreme Court on December 6, 2019 left that injunc­tion in place.