In a sweep­ing look at the cur­rent state of the U.S. death penal­ty, USA Today reporters Richard Wolf and Kevin Johnson high­light sev­er­al recent sto­ry lines that col­lec­tive­ly illus­trate a dra­mat­ic decline in the coun­try’s use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Their con­clu­sion: ​“The death penal­ty in America may be liv­ing on bor­rowed time.” Wolf and Johnson recount recent cas­es in which high-pro­file crimes result­ed in a life with­out parole sen­tence, in many instances because vic­tims’ fam­i­lies raised con­cerns about the painful emo­tion­al impact of a lengthy appeals process. Skeet Glover, whose father and step­moth­er were killed in Texas, explained his fam­i­ly’s sup­port for a plea deal result­ing in a life with­out parole sen­tence: ​“As a fam­i­ly, we were going to do this togeth­er. I could­n’t help my dad any­more. I could­n’t help (step­moth­er) Peggy … and I did­n’t want to pun­ish any­one else in the family…There are no regrets.” The arti­cle also tells the sto­ries of death row exonerees, includ­ing the sev­en men exon­er­at­ed in the last two years after spend­ing 30 years or more on death row, and per­sis­tent ques­tions of inno­cence for inmates still fac­ing exe­cu­tion. The sto­ry then turns to ongo­ing bat­tles in courts and leg­is­la­tures. It chron­i­cles the dif­fi­cul­ties sur­round­ing lethal injec­tion, from trade reg­u­la­tions and oppo­si­tion from the med­ical com­mu­ni­ty that has made it more dif­fi­cult for states to obtain exe­cu­tion drugs to legal chal­lenges against exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols. Legislative action has shown ​“a clear trend in favor of retreat or repeal,” the arti­cle states, not­ing the sev­en states that have recent­ly repealed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, and the four states where mora­to­ri­ums are in place. (Click image to enlarge.)

(R. Wolf and K. Johnson, ​“Courts, states put death penal­ty on life sup­port,” USA Today, September 14, 2015.) See Recent Legislation and Innocence.

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