AP: U.S. death-row population on the decline

[question everything]

U.S. death-row population on the decline

Executions, sentences fall in '04, report says

By Andrew Bridges
ASSOCIATED PRESS

November 14, 2005

WASHINGTON – The ranks of people sentenced to death and the number executed declined in 2004 as the nation's death-row population kept shrinking, the government reported yesterday.

Last year, a dozen states executed 59 prisoners, six fewer than in 2003, according to the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics. The report also said 125 people, including five women, who were convicted of murder received a death sentence last year. That was the smallest number in more than three decades.

(snip)

Tracy Snell, one of the report's authors, said the number of prisoners under death sentences has declined four years in a row, the result of a murder rate at its lowest level in 40 years. One death-penalty advocate said the threat of harsh punishment is responsible for that falling rate.

(snip)

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, said jurors increasingly are reluctant to recommend the death penalty. Dieter cited cases where death-row prisoners have been freed after media or legal investigations; the use of DNA evidence to exonerate those wrongly convicted; and the increased availability of life-without-parole sentences as an alternative to capital punishment.

(snip)


Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051114/news_1n14death.html

[NYC Liberal]

1. Link to the full report:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cp.htm

Some samples:

In 2004, 59 persons in 12 States were executed -- 23 in Texas; 7 in Ohio; 6 in Oklahoma; 5 in Virginia; 4 each in North Carolina and South Carolina, 2 each in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Nevada; and 1 each in Arkansas and Maryland.

Of persons executed in 2004:
-- 36 were white
-- 19 were black
-- 3 were Hispanic (all white)
-- 1 Asian



Of persons under sentence of death in 2004:
-- 1,851 were white
-- 1,390 were black
-- 28 were American Indian
-- 32 were Asian
-- 14 were of unknown race.

At year-end 2004, the youngest inmate under sentence of death was 18; the oldest was 89.

[question everything]

2. And then we are shocked at Abu Ghraib

when our culture promote state-endorsed killing people, why not torture them, first?

And is it any wonder that we have a president who comes from Texas who sees everything in black and white, in simple form? You have a murderer, execute him. End of story.