The decline of death?

This CNN.com article provides, under the headline "Death sentences at 30-year low," the highlights of the latest official accounting by the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the state of capital punishment in the United States.  The full report can be accessed here, and it provides a wealth of information about the laws and practices of the death penalty in the United States. 

As you will see in the full report, even though the national number of executions and death sentences imposed continues to decline, the story of capital punishment remains a regional story.  The great majority of death sentences and executions take place in the south; interestingly, in 2003 the west had no executions but a fair number of death sentences, while the midwest had a relatively sizeable number of executions but relatively fewer death sentences.