FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Brenda Bowser Tuesday, December 14, 2004 

DEATH PENALTY NUMBERS IN 2004 CONTINUE DRAMATIC FIVE-YEAR DECLINE

DPIC’s Year End Report Highlights Drops in Death Sentences, Executions, Death Row Population, and Public Support for Capital Punishment

WASHINGTON, DC – A five-year decline in death sen­tences, a 40% drop in exe­cu­tions, a shrink­ing death row pop­u­la­tion, and wan­ing pub­lic sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment have marked a sig­nif­i­cant turn around in the use of the death penal­ty, accord­ing to the Death Penalty Information Center’s (DPIC) 2004 Year End Report. DPIC’s num­bers are for 2004 and rein­force fig­ures for 2003 that were released in November by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Other impor­tant devel­op­ments in 2004 also indi­cate changes in the death penal­ty pic­ture. In New York, the state’s high­est court found its death penal­ty statute to be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, and in New Jersey, ques­tions about the method of exe­cu­tion have put all cas­es on hold. In Texas, promi­nent lead­ers and edi­to­r­i­al boards are call­ing for a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, and leg­is­la­tors in California, the state with the largest death row, have com­mis­sioned a study of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to uncov­er flaws in the sys­tem. The U.S. Supreme Court heard argu­ments to deter­mine the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of exe­cut­ing juve­nile offend­ers, and Congress passed the Innocence Protection Act to help pre­vent wrongful convictions.

​“The events of the past year and the sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence all point in one direc­tion,” said Richard Dieter, DPIC Executive Director. ​“The public’s con­fi­dence in the death penal­ty has seri­ous­ly erod­ed over the past sev­er­al years. Because of so many fail­ures, the death penal­ty is right­ly on the defen­sive. Life-with­out-parole offers the pub­lic a bet­ter alter­na­tive with­out all the risks and expense.”

The num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced to death annu­al­ly has dropped by 50% since 1999. The Bureau of Justice Statistics report­ed 144 death sen­tences in 2003, the low­est num­ber in three decades, and DPIC projects an even small­er num­ber this year based on fig­ures for the first three quar­ters of 2004. If the cur­rent rate con­tin­ues, there will be 130 death sen­tences this year. In addi­tion, the num­ber of indi­vid­u­als on death row declined from 3,504 in 2003 to 3,471 in 2004. Executions also fell by 10%, down from 65 in 2003 to 59 in 2004. This rep­re­sents a 40% drop since 1999. Of the exe­cu­tions that did take place, only two states con­duct­ed exe­cu­tions out­side of the south, which account­ed for 85% of the executions.

Public sup­port for the death penal­ty con­tin­ued to erode in 2004. When respon­dents were giv­en a choice between the death penal­ty and life-with­out-parole as the appro­pri­ate sen­tence for first-degree mur­der, 50% of those polled favored the death penal­ty and 46% favored life with­out a parole. In 1997, the dif­fer­ence between these two choic­es was 32 percentage points.

Concerns about inno­cence con­tin­ue to be a prin­ci­pal rea­son for the decline in the use of the death penal­ty. Five peo­ple were exon­er­at­ed from death row in 2004, bring­ing the total num­ber of exonerees since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed to 117. This cri­sis has led to a series of calls for either sig­nif­i­cant reform of the death penal­ty or a com­plete ces­sa­tion of exe­cu­tions. Prominent polit­i­cal lead­ers, Supreme Court Justices, and law enforce­ment offi­cials in Texas and else­where have come to the con­clu­sion that the present sys­tem can no longer be tolerated.

The 2004 Year End Report is the 10th of its kind pub­lished by DPIC, a non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion serv­ing the media and the pub­lic with analy­sis and infor­ma­tion on capital punishment.