The Death Penalty in 1995: Year End Report

Executions in the United States are reach­ing record num­bers. Even with­out the most recent wave of attempts to cur­tail death row appeals, the num­ber of peo­ple put to death has been steadi­ly ris­ing. Contrary to the pop­u­lar mis­con­cep­tion that death row inmates are grant­ed ​“end­less appeals,” there have been 313 exe­cu­tions since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976. This year alone there have been 56 exe­cu­tions, more than any oth­er year in the modern era.

Moreover, the pace of exe­cu­tions is also quick­en­ing. It took 12 years after the Supreme Court allowed exe­cu­tions to resume to reach the first 100 exe­cu­tions, 5 years to exe­cute the next 100 inmates, and less than two and a half years to achieve the third 100 exe­cu­tions. The prospect of over 100 exe­cu­tions per year appears like­ly in the near future. 

This accel­er­a­tion in car­ry­ing out the death penal­ty has been accom­pa­nied by a ​“dereg­u­la­tion of death” — that is, a dis­man­tling of the legal pro­tec­tions tra­di­tion­al­ly afford­ed those fac­ing the state’s ulti­mate pun­ish­ment. As the year clos­es, this ero­sion of the safe­guards against mis­tak­en exe­cu­tions is itself accel­er­at­ing as Congress pre­pares to dras­ti­cal­ly cut the oppor­tu­ni­ty for death row defen­dants to obtain fed­er­al review and as it com­plete­ly defunds the death penal­ty resource cen­ters which had been com­mis­sioned to assure death row representation.