Between January 1, 1977 and December 31, 2000, there were 683 executions
in 31 states. 65% of those executions were in five states (mainly in the southern part of the United States):
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12 states do not have the death penalty:
| Hanging | Firing Squad | Electrocution | Gas Chamber | Lethal Injection |
The most common circumstance for which one might be sentenced to death is murder. In most states, they have the death penalty, but do not use it. The most common murder cases involve murder of an officer, murder where there was a witness, capital murder, etc. The second most common reason is rape, kidnapping, or homicide on any account. Sexual assault or rape of underaged youth are frequent. Murder during kidnapping, kidnapping with bodily injury when the victim dies, or kidnapping for ransom and in a result, the victim dies are high reasons of why someone might be sentenced to death.
The most common ways someone might be executed would be lethal injection or electrocution. Some states do give the inmate the choice of either one of those. In some states, they have appointed dates to which they might choose the option of lethal injection or lethal gas.
More than 100 inmates have been exonerated for crimes they didn't commit. The time spent on death row by all of the inmates totaled over 800 years. Reversal rates increase about 80% when death sentencing increases from a quarter of the national average to the highest rate for a state. The national average of wrongful convictions and releases from death row is around 70%.
This graph shows the reversal rates for individual states from 1973-1995. The national average is 70%.
Reversals by higher courts were due to "serious error" - primarily "egregiously incompetent" defense lawyers, suppression of exculpatory evidence by police and prosecutors, and faulty instructions to jurors. Columbia law professor James Liebman did a study on the 10 states that used the death penalty more than others, and found that, more often than not, cases involving the murder of a white person had more reversals than those with the murder of a minority. As Texas prepared to execute Thomas Miller-El, a black, Miller-El's lawyers claimed that prosecuters illegally and deliberately excluded blacks from the jury in order to further their attempt at getting a death sentence. This is just one example of the apparent one-sided nature of the reversals for the death penalty. According to a report by Amnesty International, 80 percent of the more than 750 prisoners executed since 1977 were convicted of killing whites, even though blacks and whites are the victims of murder in almost equal numbers. Heavy and indiscriminate use of the death penalty creates a high risk that mistakes will occur.
| In the past 10 years, the number of executions in the US has increased while the murder rate has declined. Some commentators have maintained that the murder rate has dropped because of the increase in executions. However, during this decade, the murder rate in non-death-penalty states has remained consistantly lower than the rate in the states with the death penalty. |  |
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New York Times found that states without the death penalty have lower homicide rates than states with the death penalty. The Times reports that ten of the twelve states without the death penalty have homicide rates below the national average. Whereas half of the states with the death penalty have homicide rates above. During the last 20 years, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48-101% higher than in states without the death penalty. |
According to data released on October 28 as a part of the FBI's Uniform Crime Report for 2001, the southagain has the highest murder rate of the four regions in the United States.
In 2001, almost 80% of the executions occured in the south. The report noted that the Texas crime rate rose 4% in 2001, nearly five times the national average and the state posted a 7.6% increase in homicides. The northeast,the region with the lowest murder rate had no executions in 2001.
In conclusion, it appears that states that offer the death penalty have a higher crime rate than those that don't.
Given the recent criticism of capital punishment, states have taken action to either halt or further study the use of the death penalty. Here are some examples:
Letter to Bush
Sent by:
Ira Glasser Executive Director American Civil Liberties Union
William F. Shultz Executive Director Amnesty International U.S.A.
John W. Whitehead President The Rutherford Institute
15 of 19 sentenced to death row by feds were minorities
Maryland Moratorium
May 9, 2002 moratorium set
Pennsylvania Senate Wants a Moratorium
69% (168 of 242) of PA death row inmates are minorities
Illinois Death Penalty
Jan. 31, 2002 moratorium placed in Illinois by Governor George Ryan