Arkansas stay reflects drop in U. S. executions

2016 saw the fewest put to death in 25 years

An unprecedented series of court rulings that halted the execution of eight Arkansas prisoners reflects a decadeslong national trend that has sharply curtailed capital punishment.

Death penalty experts say the court decisions are in keeping with a number of factors prompting executions in the USA to decline, including challenges based on DNA evidence, litigation over the drugs used and increased use of life without parole as a sentencing option.

Prisoner executions nationwide dropped nearly every year since 1999, when 98 prisoners were executed. Twenty were executed in 2016, the fewest since 1991.

The growth of life without parole as an option, as well as the high cost of prosecuting a capital case, have led prosecutors to push for the death penalty in fewer cases, said Michael Benza, senior instructor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

“If you think of the death penalty as sort of a freeway, it’s actually becoming more of a country lane,” he said.

Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham University School of Law, said DNA evidence has led to closer scrutiny. “We’ve seen a precipitous decline since 1999,” she said. “Attorneys were starting to introduce DNA into court, and you had these cases showing that people were innocent.”

While lethal injection became the USA’s primary method of execution in the 1990s, Denno said, only in recent years have challenges gained traction.

On Saturday, a federal judge ordered Arkansas to halt the executions of eight prisoners in less than two weeks, which Gov. Hutchinson said was because the state’s supply of one of three drugs used in executions was set to expire.

Joshua Marquis, district attorney for Clatsop County, Ore., a death penalty proponent, attributed the decline in executions to fewer murder cases in which the death penalty might be appropriate.