Nation’s Execution Rate Increases Sharply

States are executing death row inmates at a sharply escalating rate, new Justice Department statistics show, as legal efforts by opponents of capital punishment have been consistently fruitless.

Authorities attribute the trend partly to growing skepticism in many states concerning the possible rehabilitation of violent criminals. In addition, Congress and more than a dozen state legislatures have in recent months limited legal appeals for those under sentence of death or have added “aggravating factors” to sentencing laws allowing more convicted felons to be executed.

Justice Department statistics released Wednesday show that 56 executions were conducted last year in 16 states. By comparison, 31 inmates were executed in 1994.

California had none in 1995 but put two murderers to death in a three-month period earlier this year.

“The death penalty is mostly coming home to roost,” said Washington lawyer Richard Dieter, an opponent of capital punishment. “People are pushing for it. This attitude results from an increase in violent crime in the early 1990s, although the rate has gone down since. And courts are less willing to hear about new evidence in these cases or grant additional appeals.”

Dieter, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, predicted that “we’ll probably see greater numbers of executions in the near future resulting from Congress and state legislatures streamlining the appeals process.”

Gerald M. Caplan, dean of the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento and an expert on crime, said that while violent crime has decreased for two years in a row, “what frightens many Americans is the random and unpredictable nature of many violent crimes.” Support for capital punishment has grown as the idea of rehabilitating violent criminals has diminished as a popular notion, Caplan said.

Tracy L. Snell, a Justice Department statistician, said Delaware, Illinois, Connecticut, New Jersey and Nevada are among states that last year expanded the number of crimes or special circumstances that could lead to capital punishment. Indiana, Maryland and several other states approved revisions in their death penalty laws to shorten the time period for appeals by felons, Snell said.

In California, Gov. Pete Wilson has joined Democrats in pledging to work for death penalty reforms aimed at cutting the time between a killer’s conviction and execution from about 15 years to five.

By the close of last year, 420 prisoners were under sentence of death in California, the largest number among all states, the department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics said in its annual report Wednesday. The state’s death row count was followed by Texas at 404, Florida at 362 and Pennsylvania at 196, the report said. A total of 3,054 prisoners await execution nationally.

Legal experts said California has a disproportionately large number of death row inmates because federal judges and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco have blocked or delayed many executions.

Last summer, however, in a move that probably will speed up the execution rate, the Supreme Court ruled that state death row inmates who have lost one federal court appeal can go no further, except in rare instances in which powerful new evidence has come to light.

Dieter said opponents of capital punishment have been weakened by congressional action withdrawing funds for death penalty research centers. Congress once had contributed $19 million a year to these centers to help defendants find attorneys to handle capital-case appeals.