Death Sentences Show Decline Nationwide

The number of death sentences imposed by juries around the country has plummeted since 1999, according to a study released Wednesday by the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment.

In 1999, 276 death sentences were imposed. The figure has dropped every year since, falling to 125 last year. With 10 days to go in 2005, 96 death sentences are projected to be handed down this year, the lowest total since 1976.

One of the most striking statistics comes from Harris County, Texas, which has sent more people to death row than any other county in the state that leads the nation in executions. Harris County has generated two death sentences this year; Houston, its largest city, has been referred to as “the capital of capital punishment.”

Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the center, based in Washington, D.C., said several factors had contributed to the decrease in death sentences -- prime among them the fact that jurors in all but one of the 38 states that had capital punishment laws were able to render sentences of life without parole. Jurors, he said, are becoming increasingly comfortable with voting for such sentences rather than death.

Joshua Marquis, the district attorney in Astoria, Ore., who is spokesman for the National District Attorneys Assn. on death penalty issues, said he thought that executions were down because of the overall decrease in violent crime around the country. He also said that he thought that tough sentencing laws -- such as three strikes, mandatory minimums and death sentences -- “have had a clear deterrent effect.”

There is no question, Marquis said, that when life without possibility of parole is an option, “it is the preferred choice of most juries.”

Dieter said that although a significant majority of Americans -- 64% in the latest Gallup poll, down from 80% in 1994 -- supported the death penalty, there was growing skepticism about the fairness of its use. He said that was attributable, at least in part, to the growing number of death row inmates released after it was established that they were wrongfully convicted.

That number now stands at 122.

The number of executions also has dropped sharply, from 98 in 1999 to 60 in 2005. Texas led the field with 19 executions this year, a slight decrease from 23 in 2004 and a sharp decline from the peak year of 2000, when that state executed 40 people.

Since 1973, Texas has executed 355 people, about a third of the national total of 1,004. Virginia is second, with 94 executions, but it has carried out none this year.

Sixteen states have held executions this year, with about two-thirds taking place in Southern and Southwestern states.

California, the nation’s most populous state, has the largest death row, with 648 inmates. The state has executed 12 people since reinstituting capital punishment in 1978. California executed two men -- Donald Beardslee and Stanley Tookie Williams -- this year, and expects to execute two more in the first two months of 2006.

In one respect, California went counter to national trends this year, sending 18 people to death row, twice as many as in 2004. But that is considerably fewer than the 42 death sentences meted out in 1999, the peak year.

Death penalty foes also were heartened by several other developments:

Illinois continued a death penalty moratorium for the sixth year.

And in November, the New Jersey senate passed a bill that would suspend executions and create a commission to study the state’s capital punishment law. The bill is set to be considered in the state Assembly in January. If the measure passes, New Jersey would become the first state to legislatively impose a death penalty moratorium.

Sentiment has mounted against capital punishment there, even though New Jersey has one of the nation’s smallest death rows, with 14 inmates, and has not held an execution since 1963.

The high cost of the death penalty may be a factor, according to the report released Wednesday. A recent study by a public policy organization in New Jersey found that the state had spent $283 million on capital cases since 1983, the year after it reinstituted the death penalty.

The California Legislature is scheduled to consider a death penalty moratorium in January, but passage is far from assured.

Death penalty foes also garnered significant victories in court this year. In Kansas and New York, the states’ highest courts overturned death penalty statutes. Kansas has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court; in New York, the statute would have to be changed legislatively, something lawmakers there have declined to do.

Four states -- Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan and Wisconsin -- considered reinstating the death penalty, but efforts to do so failed.

In March, the Supreme Court concluded that there was a national consensus against executing individuals for murders committed as juveniles, and the justices barred the practice. The ruling meant that 71 death row inmates had their sentences commuted to life.

The high court issued two other significant pro-defendant rulings in capital cases, one involving racial bias in jury selection and another dealing with poor representation during a trial. The Supreme Court has three major death penalty cases on its docket in the current term.

Dieter said he thought that 2005 might “be remembered as the year that life without parole became an acceptable alternative to the death penalty in the U.S.” He noted that Texas became the 37th of 38 states with the death penalty to adopt this option for its juries.

Moreover, he said, even in notorious cases such as that of Eric Rudolph -- who killed two people at a family planning clinic and set off a bomb at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta -- federal prosecutors accepted a guilty plea and a sentence of life without parole. So did Kansas prosecutors in the case of Dennis L. Rader, the BTK murderer who received 10 consecutive life terms for 10 slayings.