Policy Issues
Sentencing Alternatives
Alternative sentences, such as life without parole, avoid some of the key problems with capital punishment, including the high cost of the death penalty and the risk of executing an innocent person.
DPIC Podcast: Discussions With DPIC
Missouri Attorney Discusses Winning Life Sentence in Federal Prison-Killing Case
Overview
Increasingly, discussion around the death penalty has shifted from a moral debate to a comparison of capital punishment to its viable alternatives. The choice today for jurors, legislators, and the courts is between the death penalty and the sentence of life without parole. All states that have the death penalty also have a sentence of life without parole (LWOP). Victims’ families often prefer LWOP to the uncertainty and the spectacle of the death penalty. Many prosecutors have come to the conclusion that the costs associated with capital cases are not worth their limited resources, especially since so many cases are overturned. As the use of LWOP has expanded, the number of death sentences has declined dramatically.
In addition to the use of LWOP, 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. The money saved from not seeking the death penalty can be used to support those initiatives.
At Issue
Although prosecutors often allow a capital defendant to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence, many are reluctant to eliminate the death penalty itself because they see it as a bargaining chip. This role of the death penalty as a threat is suspect on both ethical and constitutional grounds.
Some opponents of capital punishment also question the use of life-without-parole sentences as another form of a death sentence and note its expanded use even in non-capital cases.
What DPIC Offers
Many opinion polls today contrast the death penalty with LWOP, and DPIC has collected the results of those surveys. DPIC provides research on when each state’s legislature adopted LWOP. It also examines how LWOP is arrived at in a particular case if the jury cannot agree on a death sentence.
Nov 24, 2020
Gallup Poll: Public Support for the Death Penalty Lowest in a Half-Century
Public support for the death penalty is at its lowest level in a half-century, with opposition higher than any time since 1966, according to the 2020 annual Gallup poll on Americans’ attitudes about capital punishment. Fifty-five percent o…
Read MoreNews & Developments
Arbitrariness
Jun 07, 2021
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of May 31, 2021
NEWS (6/4/21) — Arizona: The Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in Lynch v. Arizona, which struck down the state’s unconstitutional refusal to instruct capital-sentencing juries that defend…
Race
Apr 22, 2021
Commentary: Ending Capital Punishment is a Core Component of Reconceptualizing ‘Public Safety’ in an Era of Punitive Excess
As the United States undergoes an awakening on racial injustices in policing and the judicial process, commentators and public policy advocates are calling for a reimagining of public safety and criminal punishment that rejects the reflexive impos…
Costs
Jul 23, 2020
Santa Clara DA Announces Office Will No Longer Pursue Death Penalty
After four unsuccessful attempts to impose the death penalty over the past decade and what he described as a transformative visit to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, Santa Clara County, California Distric…
Costs
Jul 21, 2020
Wyoming Governor “Very Seriously” Considering Death Penalty Moratorium
Calling capital punishment a “luxury” that the state can no longer afford, Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon (pictured) told legislators that he is “very seriously” considering imposing a moratorium on the state’s rarely-used death pen…
Sentencing Alternatives
Jul 07, 2020
74-Year-Old ‘Golden State Killer’ Joseph DeAngelo Pleads Guilty to 13 Murders and Rapes, Gets 11 Life Sentences
Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. (pictured), the “Golden State Killer,” whom prosecutors had one year earlier held out as a “poster child for the death penalty,” has pleaded guilty to 13 counts each of murder and rape in exchange for mul…
Arbitrariness
Jun 13, 2020
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of June 8, 2020
NEWS (6/11/20) — Florida: The Florida Supreme Court applied new cases that retroactively changed the law regarding claims of intellectual disability and the unconstitutionality of death sentences imposed after non-unanimous jury votes for …
Sentencing Alternatives
Apr 23, 2020
Release of Former Virginia Death-Row Prisoner Delayed as Police Protest Grant of Parole
The release of a former Virginia death-row prisoner has been delayed after police organizations demanded an inquiry into the Virginia Parole Board decision to grant parole to Vincent Lamont Martin
Sentencing Alternatives
Apr 13, 2020
News Brief — Prosecutors Drop Death Penalty in Last Remaining Colorado Capital Prosecution
NEWS (4/13/20) — Colorado: Prosecutors in Colorado Springs have dropped the death penalty in their murder case against Marco Garcia-Bravo in the shooting death of two high school students, the last remaining capital prosec…
Sentencing Alternatives
Apr 08, 2020
Nebraska Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to State’s Capital Sentencing Procedures
The Nebraska Supreme Court has upheld the state’s death penalty law against a claim that its death-sentencing procedure violates capital defendants’ Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial.In a decision issued on April 3, 202…
Sentencing Alternatives
Mar 19, 2020
News Brief — Florida Supreme Court Denies Relief in Two More Jury Non-Unanimity Cases
NEWS (3/19/20): Florida — The Florida Supreme Court has denied new sentencing hearings to two more death-row prisoners who were sentenced to death after non-unanimous sentencing recommendations by their juries. Relying on the cour…
