Stark Decline in Louisiana’s Use of Death Penalty Reflects Broader Trends

A recent arti­cle in The Economist exam­ines the state of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Louisiana and the state’s strik­ing decline in the use of the death penal­ty. In 1987, its peak year for exe­cu­tions, Louisiana exe­cut­ed eight pris­on­ers. Since 2002, the state has had just one exe­cu­tion. This decline ​“is far more pre­cip­i­tous than in neigh­bor­ing states like Mississippi and Alabama,” which the arti­cle says have each exe­cut­ed more than 10 peo­ple since 2010. 

The rea­sons for Louisiana’s reduc­tion in exe­cu­tions are sim­i­lar to those behind declines in oth­er states across the nation. Louisiana’s nine exon­er­a­tions of pris­on­ers wrong­ly sent to death row under the state’s cur­rent death penal­ty statute brought atten­tion to prob­lems of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and the risk of exe­cut­ing inno­cent peo­ple. Studies have demon­strat­ed seri­ous racial bias in the state’s use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment: defen­dants con­vict­ed of killing white vic­tims are more than 10 times as like­ly to be exe­cut­ed than those con­vict­ed of killing black vic­tims. The courts reverse death sen­tences imposed in Louisiana at rates that are ​“extreme­ly high” as com­pared to oth­er states. And the high cost of death penal­ty cas­es has made dis­trict attor­neys more hes­i­tant to seek a death sen­tence, espe­cial­ly since Louisiana sets an unusu­al­ly low bar for obtain­ing a sen­tence of life with­out parole. While a death sen­tence requires two unan­i­mous jury votes (one for guilt and anoth­er for a death sen­tence), a life with­out parole sen­tence can be imposed when only 10 jurors agree that the defen­dant is guilty. 

As a result of all these fac­tors, the state with the high­est incar­cer­a­tion rate in the coun­try has not per­formed an exe­cu­tion in more than 6 years.