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.
Policy Issues
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.
Missouri Attorney Discusses Winning Life Sentence in Federal Prison-Killing Case
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.
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.
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
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 MoreJul 23, 2020
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…
Jul 21, 2020
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…
Jul 07, 2020
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…
Jun 13, 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 …
Apr 23, 2020
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
Apr 13, 2020
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…
Apr 08, 2020
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…
Mar 19, 2020
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…
Mar 18, 2020
Virginia’s death row shrank to just two prisoners on March 12 as recently elected Fairfax County, Virginia Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve T. Descano agree…
Mar 13, 2020
Capital sentencing schemes that permit judges to impose a death sentence despite the votes of one or more jurors for life create a heightened risk that an innocent person will be wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death, according to a new