Updating the (declining) state of the death penalty

Thanks to this notice over at the Death Penalty Information Center, I see that the NAACP Legal Defense Fund has released its Summer 2005 update of Death Row U.S.A.  As DPIC notes, the number of inmates on death rows around the country as of July 1 is 3,415, which is "down from 3,452 as of April 1 and down considerably from the 3,692 inmates recorded on October 1, 2002.... Some of the [recent] declines are due to juvenile offenders being removed from death row in accordance with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roper v. Simmons." 

This latest update of Death Row U.S.A. from LDF's Criminal Justice Project includes not only a wealth of information about death row inmates and executions, but also has a very helpful summary of recent Supreme Court decisions and pending cases related to capital punishment.

In a number of prior posts, some of which are linked below, I have documented recent declines in the use of the death penalty in the United States:

• The decline of death?
• The slowing pace of executions
• Death is definitely different this month
• More on the decline of death
• More evidence of the decline of death