The Nation - News from Sept. 14, 1987

One out of every 42 Death Row inmates has been executed in the decade since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported. There were 2,839 convicts under a death sentence from 1977 to 1986 and 68 of them were executed, including 18 last year, the bureau said. There have been more than 200,000 murders in the past decade. Since 1977, one-third of the offenders on Death Row carried out successful court appeals or obtained commutations of their sentences, and 41 died while awaiting execution. A total of 1,781 inmates were on Death Row at the end of last year, including 18 women.