Sentencing Alternatives

Overview 

Discussion around the death penalty has increasingly shifted away from a moral debate to a comparison of capital punishment and its viable alternatives. The choice today for prosecutors, jurors, legislators, and the courts is usually between the death penalty and a sentence of life without parole (LWOP). Some victims’ families prefer LWOP to the uncertainty of securing a death sentence and the likelihood of many years of appeals before an execution would occur. Many prosecutors have also concluded that the high costs associated with capital cases are unaffordable, especially with the high rate of reversals. As the availability and use of LWOP has expanded, the number of death sentences has declined dramatically.

States have also looked beyond punishment to alternative ways of reducing violent crime, including community policing, the introduction of crime-fighting technology, and restorative justice efforts. In some jurisdictions, resources not expended in seeking the death penalty could be used to support these initiatives.

At Issue 

Many prosecutors are reluctant to eliminate the death penalty as an option because they see it as a bargaining chip that results in capital defendants pleading guilty in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table. Commentators have noted that the use of the death penalty as a threat is concerning on both ethical and constitutional grounds.

Some opponents of capital punishment also characterize the use of life-without-parole sentences as just another kind of death sentence and note its expanded use even in non-capital cases contributed to the current problem of mass incarceration. According to a 2021 report from The Sentencing Project, the number of people serving sentences of life without parole has increased 66% since 2003; one out of seven incarcerated persons is serving a sentence of either LWOP, life with parole, or a sentence of 50 years or more. Aligning with larger racial disparities in prison sentencing, there is a disproportionate number of Black people serving LWOP sentences, according to 2020 data from the Prison Policy Initiative. The U.S. continues to have the world’s highest prison population per capita, with 629 people per 100,000 in prison, according to Penal Reform International’s 2022 Global Prison Trends. On the other hand, LWOP has been available as an option in every state that has abolished the death penalty in recent years, and some defense lawyers acknowledge that without LWOP many of their clients would be in danger of receiving death sentences.

What DPIC Offers 

Recent opinion polls note the public’s view of using the death penalty vs. alternative sentences, and DPIC has collected the results of those surveys. DPIC also provides information on state legislative efforts to adopt LWOP and examines when and how LWOP results in cases where juries cannot agree on a death sentence.