The Death Penalty in 2005: Year End Report

The year 2005 may be remem­bered as the year that life with­out parole became an accept­able alter­na­tive to the death penal­ty in the U.S. Texas became the 37^th out of 38 death penal­ty states to adopt this option for its juries. New York’s leg­is­la­ture did not restore the death penal­ty after it was found uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, leav­ing life with­out parole as the pun­ish­ment for cap­i­tal mur­der. Across the coun­try, the num­ber of death sen­tences dropped to record lows and some of the most noto­ri­ous offend­ers received life sen­tences rather than death. The year drew to a close with a com­mu­ta­tion to a sen­tence of life with­out parole for Robin Lovitt in Virginia. This left Virginia, the state with the sec­ond largest num­ber of exe­cu­tions since 1976, with no exe­cu­tions for the year.

The declin­ing use of the death penal­ty in 2005 extend­ed the steady drop in death sen­tences and in the size of the death row in recent years. Although exe­cu­tions increased by one in 2005, they are still 39% below their peak in 1999.

Death sen­tences aver­aged about 300 per year nation­al­ly dur­ing the late 1990s. Since then, the num­ber of death sen­tences per year has dropped 55%, to 125 in 2004. The pro­jec­tion for 2005 is 96 death sen­tences (based on data from 3/​4 of the year) (Correction: the num­ber of death sen­tences for 2005 should be esti­mat­ed at 125, the same as for 2004) — the low­est num­ber since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976. In Harris County, Texas, often referred to as the ​“cap­i­tal of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment,” there were only 2 death sen­tences in all of 2005.

Instead of the death penal­ty, juries, leg­is­la­tors, pros­e­cu­tors, and vic­tim fam­i­ly mem­bers increas­ing­ly expressed their pref­er­ence for life-with­out-parole sen­tences, which car­ry much less uncer­tain­ty than death sen­tences. According to a study by the New York Times, the num­ber of pris­on­ers serv­ing life sen­tences has dou­bled in the past decade.

Edna Weaver, whose daugh­ter was mur­dered in New Jersey, expressed relief that the defen­dant was spared the death penal­ty: ​“I’m so thank­ful it came out the way it did.… I would­n’t want anoth­er moth­er to feel like I do – it’s a feel­ing I could nev­er put into words.”

Similarly, the fam­i­ly of Louisiana mur­der vic­tim Kim Groves asked the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to for­go seek­ing the death penal­ty for co-defen­dants Paul Hardy and Len Davis: ​“Executing these two men will not bring Kim Groves back to life.… The fam­i­ly believes the death penal­ty would in fact be the less­er of the pun­ish­ments and that the final­i­ty and dura­tion of a life sen­tence would be much more dif­fi­cult and severe to Mr. Davis, in par­tic­u­lar, than death.”

Even in noto­ri­ous cas­es, such as that of Eric Rudolph, who killed two peo­ple at a med­ical clin­ic and set off a bomb at the Olympics in Atlanta, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors accept­ed a guilty plea and a sen­tence of life-with­out-parole. In Kansas, Dennis Rader, who mur­dered 10 peo­ple, was giv­en mul­ti­ple life sen­tences. Similarly, in recent years ser­i­al killers such as Gary Ridgway in Washington, who con­fessed to 48 mur­ders, and Charles Cullen, a nurse who killed 17 peo­ple in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, were giv­en life with­out parole sentences.

Read the press release here.