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
Nov 23, 2021
California Penal Code Committee Recommends Repealing State’s Death Penalty
The Committee on Revision of the Penal Code, created by the California state legislature to review the state’s criminal laws, has issued a report unanimously recommending that the state repeal its death penalty. T…
Sentencing Alternatives
Oct 07, 2021
Report: More Women Serving Extreme Sentences in the United States
The number of women serving extreme sentences in the United States has increased sharply in the last decade, a September 2021 report by a collaborative of criminal law reform organizations has found. The report,
Sentencing Alternatives
Sep 16, 2021
NEW SCHOLARSHIP: History Says Those Left on Death Row After Capital Punishment Statutes are Struck Down or Repealed Should Not be Executed
“What should become of individuals who are awaiting execution following the repeal or judicial invalidation of capital punishment legislation?,” ask authors James R. Acker (pictured, left) and Brian W. Stull (pict…
Sentencing Alternatives
Aug 02, 2021
Lawsuit Alleges Unwritten Policy to Wrongfully Deny Parole to Former Ohio Death-Row Prisoners
Two Ohio civil rights organizations have filed suit against the state’s parole board, alleging that the board has an illegal policy of automatically denying parole to anyone who was formerly sentenced to death. On July 28,…
Sentencing Alternatives
Jun 28, 2021
Poll: Three-Quarters of Dallas Voters Say They Prefer Life Alternatives to Capital Punishment
Three quarters of Dallas, Texas voters say they prefer some version of life imprisonment over the death penalty for people convicted of first-degree murder, a new poll has found. The poll, which was conducted on June 16 – 1…
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…
