Constitutional Law

Executions, Death Sentences See Major Decline In 2008

The use of executions and application of death sentences dropped to a 14-year-low in 2008 according to a report from the Death Penalty Information Center. The entire report is available here. The National Law Journal noted that half of the 37 executions in 2008 were carried out in Texas. Courts issued death sentences to 111 people in 2008, the lowest number in three decades according to The New York Times. In spring, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of lethal injections in Baze v. Rees, but according to The National Law Journal only nine states resumed executions. The Death Penalty Information Center’s report also noted that support for the death penalty continues to drop, citing Gallup polling. Richard C. Deiter, the center’s executive director, told The Times that a “moral opposition” may not be building against the death penalty, “but there is a greater scrutiny applied to the death penalty that wasn’t there before.”

Full post as published by ACS Blog on December 31, 1969 (boomark / email).