States of punishment--Mapping the death penalty in America

[MindMover]

Mapping the death penalty in America

FROM 2000 to 2011 there were, on average, five death-row exonerations a year in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre. North Carolina alone saw three exonerations in six months in 2008. The following year the state legislature passed the Racial Justice Act, which gives death-row inmates the chance to commute their sentences to life without parole if a judge rules the sentences were tainted by racial bias. (More than half of North Carolina's death-row inmates are black.) The first ruling will be issued on April 20th, a decision that could set a precedent for other challenges based on race. Indeed the ripples could be felt across the country, especially in Pennsylvania and Missouri, where similar legislation is pending. Other states are reconsidering capital punishment altogether. In November voters in California, which has more people on death row than any other state, will vote on whether to repeal the death penalty. And Connecticut, where a repeal bill was recently passed, is set to become the 17th state to abolish capital punishment.

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/41483660@N04/6951281676/][img][/img][/url]
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/41483660@N04/6951281676/]20120421_WOC065[/url]

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/04/daily-chart-10?fsrc=scn/tw/te/dc

[sabrina 1]

1. Making progress. Soon, maybe, this medieval practice will end and we will join the rest of the

civilized world rather than where we are right now, the only so-called civilized nation that still thinks, as Bush once said, that 'we have to kill them to stop the killing'.

[Little Star]

2. Texas sure likes killing people...

I'd like to see the stats on how much crime they have deterred as opposed to other states. I bet they still have more crime than most other states.