Fewer people are being executed by fewer states.
A series of executions in Arkansas has reignited the long-standing battle over the death penalty.
Beginning April 19, the state tried to put eight men to death over 11 days before the drugs it uses in executions expired. After legal challenges, half of the executions were blocked in court.
Yet, despite the high-profile executions in Arkansas — including the first double execution in the nation in nearly 17 years — the use and support of the death penalty in the United States has steeply declined to levels unheard of in decades.
Capital punishment is still legal in most states. But while activists and experts don’t expect it to be banned nationwide anytime soon, they say the momentum against it is strong.
“Practically speaking, the death penalty is in its last days. But like any disease that’s rendered obsolete by modern medicine, it has a few flare-ups before the end,” said Eric Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University. “The long-term trend toward its extinction is pretty clear and pronounced.”
Here’s why. The number of executions in the U.S. annually hit a high of 98 in 1999. Last year, the number of people executed was 20. The last time the number was that low was in 1991, when 14 people were put to death.
If all the scheduled executions this year are carried out, 25 Americans will be put to death, according to the Death Penalty Information
U.S. executions
Center. The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization advocates against the death penalty.
Seven states have or are scheduled to carry out executions, according to the center: Texas, Virginia, Missouri, Arkansas, Ohio, Georgia and Alabama.
“It is a phenomenon now of a few counties in a few states,” Freedman said. “The vast majority of the country is living in counties where there hasn’t been an execution for decades.”
Public support is at its lowest level in 40 years.
More Americans support the death penalty than oppose it. But surveys over the years show that opposition is increasing and support is declining.
According to the most recent Pew Research Center poll, 49 percent of Americans support the death penalty for people found guilty of murder, and 42 percent of Americans are against it. The gap depends on political party. Only 34 percent of Democrats favor the death penalty, compared with 72 percent of Republicans.
Experts say the decline can be attributed to a variety of factors, including well-publicized cases of people who were sentenced to death and then exonerated.
“When people find out real people are sentenced to death even though they are not guilty, people start struggling to support executions,” said Rob Smith, the Director of Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project, which argued against the Arkansas executions, saying the trials of the men on death row were full of “legal deficiencies.”
Prosecutors are less willing to seek the death penalty — and jurors are less friendly to it.
It’s not just that fewer people are being executed. Generally speaking, fewer people are being sentenced to death.
Death sentences hit a high in 1996, when 315 Americans were condemned to die, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The decline has been steady since.