The Death Penalty in 2001: Year End Report

Throughout 2001, grow­ing con­cerns about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment were reflect­ed in a series of leg­isla­tive changes to restrict the death penal­ty, and exe­cu­tions declined sharply for the sec­ond straight year. For the first time since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed, the num­ber of peo­ple on death row also appears to be decreasing. 

The crit­i­cal ques­tion remain­ing is whether a sys­tem so marred by mis­takes and unfair­ness can be made accept­able to the pub­lic or should it be aban­doned alto­geth­er. A grow­ing num­ber of bipar­ti­san state and nation­al law­mak­ers have joined for­mer death penal­ty sup­port­ers and long-time crit­ics to express con­cerns about the fair­ness and accu­ra­cy of this system. 

During the past year, near­ly every state that retained the death penal­ty con­sid­ered or passed leg­is­la­tion to pro­vide bet­ter pro­tec­tion for defen­dants in cap­i­tal cas­es. Five states enact­ed laws to end the exe­cu­tion of men­tal­ly retard­ed defen­dants, an issue the Supreme Court will exam­ine ear­ly next year. Even the shift of the coun­try’s focus to the events of September 11 did not halt the trend towards death penalty reform. 

These devel­op­ments, as well as the exon­er­a­tion of five addi­tion­al death row inmates, con­tributed to changes in the pub­lic’s per­cep­tion of the death penal­ty. Support for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment dropped to its low­est lev­el in over 20 years, and polls showed con­sid­er­able sup­port for a tem­po­rary halt to exe­cu­tions while gov­ern­ments study the prob­lems in their cap­i­tal punishment systems.

A drop in the num­ber of exe­cu­tions in the lead­ing death penal­ty states of Texas and Virginia con­tributed to the first two-year decline since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed. The num­ber of peo­ple on death row also declined, from 3,726 at the start of the year to 3,709 as of October 1, revers­ing a trend of steadi­ly increas­ing death row pop­u­la­tions. The lat­est sta­tis­tics avail­able from the Justice Department reveal that the num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced to death in 2000 (214) dropped 24% from the pre­vi­ous year, and was the low­est num­ber of death sen­tences in 20 years. 

However, not all of the move­ment was toward restrict­ing the death penal­ty. Both the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and New Mexico returned to the death penal­ty in 2001, after four decades of no exe­cu­tions. Timothy McVeigh was exe­cut­ed on June 11 and Juan Garza on June 19, mark­ing the first fed­er­al exe­cu­tions since 1963. Despite prob­lems with its death penal­ty, Oklahoma exe­cu­tions spiked to a new high of 18.

Read the press release here.