The Death Penalty in 1996: Year End Report

The over­all pace of exe­cu­tions in the United States remained high in 1996 and the prospects for the future are for even greater num­bers of peo­ple put to death each year. As of December 17, there were 45 exe­cu­tions, most­ly by lethal injec­tion. This rep­re­sents a slight drop from last year when 56 exe­cu­tions rep­re­sent­ed the high­est num­ber since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed in 1976. The 20% decrease in exe­cu­tions this year was prob­a­bly due to the pas­sage of numer­ous fed­er­al and state laws designed to speed up exe­cu­tions. Some of these new laws cre­at­ed a legal log­jam as courts con­sid­ered the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the cur­tailed appeal process.

Texas, the nation’s leader in exe­cu­tions for many years, vir­tu­al­ly stopped exe­cu­tions this year pend­ing res­o­lu­tion of a chal­lenge to the state’s new appeal laws. Once that mat­ter is resolved, Texas will like­ly renew and even accel­er­ate its fre­quent exe­cu­tions. On the fed­er­al lev­el, Congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 which will make it increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult for even inno­cent defen­dants on death row to secure fed­er­al review. Congress also elim­i­nat­ed all mon­ey for the death penal­ty resource cen­ters which had been over­see­ing a major por­tion of death penal­ty appeals. Both of these pieces of leg­is­la­tion will result in less thor­ough rep­re­sen­ta­tion for those on death row. 

This year, the five states with the largest death rows (California, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania and Illinois) togeth­er were respon­si­ble for only 8 exe­cu­tions. But these same states have over 1,500 peo­ple on death row, indi­cat­ing that the like­li­hood for increased exe­cu­tions in the near future is great.