FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, December 13, 2001 CONTACT: BRENDA BOWSER
(202) 293‑6970
bbowser@​essential.​org

2001 DEATH PENALTY REPORT FINDS 22% DECLINE IN EXECUTIONS, REFORM INITIATIVES GAINING GROUND

Public sup­port drops, new crit­i­cisms voiced
as num­ber of death row exon­er­a­tions nears 100

WASHINGTON, DC — Today’s release of the Death Penalty Information Center’s 2001 Year End Report found a 22% decline in exe­cu­tions, a drop in pub­lic sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, and a steady stream of suc­cess­ful reform efforts through­out the nation last year. The review also notes that ques­tions of fair­ness and a grow­ing nation­al con­cern about the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty con­tin­ue to shape America’s cap­i­tal punishment debate.

For the first time since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976, the num­ber of exe­cu­tions has declined for two con­sec­u­tive years and the num­ber of peo­ple on death row is declin­ing. A 2001 Gallup Poll found that sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has dropped to 65%, 15 per­cent­age points below 1994 find­ings. Additional polling data released through­out the year reflects the pub­lic’s con­cern that inno­cent peo­ple are being sen­tenced to death. A major­i­ty of Americans now sup­port a mora­to­ri­um on executions.

“While the past year has been a time of real progress in address­ing the prob­lem areas of the death penal­ty, the cri­sis con­tin­ues,” said Richard C. Dieter, DPIC Executive Director. ​“In 2001, new evi­dence emerged of a bro­ken sys­tem. As Americans have become more famil­iar with the enor­mous poten­tial for error in cap­i­tal cas­es, they have become less tol­er­ant of state and nation­al poli­cies that risk innocent lives.”

Of the near­ly 100 inno­cent inmates who have been exon­er­at­ed from death row, five were freed in 2001. The issues raised as a result of these new inno­cence cas­es, as well as rev­e­la­tions from state and inde­pen­dent stud­ies show­ing unfair­ness in the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem, caused a num­ber of for­mer pro­po­nents of the death penal­ty to ques­tion its val­ue. DPIC’s report notes that Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were among those urg­ing a clos­er scruti­ny of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 2001.

These same con­cerns prompt­ed law­mak­ers in near­ly every state retain­ing the death penal­ty to con­sid­er a vari­ety of reform bills. Five states banned the exe­cu­tion of the men­tal­ly retard­ed, and 17 states act­ed to pro­vide greater oppor­tu­ni­ty for post-con­vic­tion DNA test­ing accord­ing to DPIC’s report. The review found that oth­er states changed their sys­tems of indi­gent defense dur­ing the year in an attempt to pro­vide better representation.

Even as the coun­try’s atten­tion turned to the trag­ic events of September 11, inter­na­tion­al oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty con­tin­ued to grow. Around the world, the num­ber of coun­tries which have stopped using the death penal­ty rose to 109, and many world lead­ers urged the U.S. to recon­sid­er its death penalty policies.

The Death Penalty Information Center is a non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion serv­ing the media and the pub­lic with analy­sis and infor­ma­tion on issues con­cern­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The Center was found­ed in 1990 and serves as a resource to those work­ing on this issue. Today’s Year End report is DPIC’s sixth annu­al review. In addi­tion to not­ing impor­tant trends in the death penal­ty, the report con­tains valu­able data on exe­cu­tions, death row pop­u­la­tions, and the results of inde­pen­dent reviews around the nation. # # #

Read the 2001 Year End Report