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December 18, 2014
DPIC year-end report highlights "death penalty decline continues in 2014"
As detailed in this press release, the Death Penalty Information Center today released its high-profile annual report. The full report is available at this link, and here are highlights drawn from the press release:
With 35 executions this year, 2014 marks the fewest people put to death since 1994, according to a report released today by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). The 72 new death sentences in 2014 is the lowest number in the modern era of the death penalty, dating back to 1974. Executions and sentences have steadily decreased, as Americans have grown more skeptical of capital punishment. The states’ problems with lethal injections also contributed to the drop in executions this year.
Executions decreased 10% compared to 2013 — from 39 last year to 35 this year — continuing an overall decline since 1999, when there were 98 executions. The number of states carrying out executions — seven — was the lowest in 25 years. Just three states – Texas, Missouri, and Florida — accounted for 80% of the executions. For the first time in 17 years, Texas did not lead the country in executions, being tied with Missouri at 10.
Death sentences — a more current barometer than executions — have declined by 77% since 1996, when there were 315. There were 79 death sentences last year. This is the fourth year in a row that there have been fewer than 100 death sentences....
Seven people who had been on death row were exonerated in 2014, the most since 2009. Three men in Ohio were cleared of all charges 39 years after their convictions, the longest time of any death row exonerees. Two others in North Carolina were freed after 30 years in confinement. Since 1973, 150 people have been exonerated and freed from death row.
Individual state developments illustrate the growing isolation of death penalty use:
The number of executions has declined in 11 of the past 15 years. In 1999, 20 states carried out executions; in 2014, only 7 states did so.
For the seventh year in a row, Texas had fewer than a dozen death sentences, a sharp decline from 1999, when it had 48.
California (14) and Florida (11) provided 35% of the death sentences in the country.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee announced that no executions would take place while he is governor, joining the governors of Oregon and Colorado in halting executions.
In California, a federal judge declared the state’s death penalty unconstitutional.
December 18, 2014 at 07:13 AM | Permalink
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"Seven people who had been on death row were exonerated in 2014, the most since 2009. Three men in Ohio were cleared of all charges 39 years after their convictions, the longest time of any death row exonerees. Two others in North Carolina were freed after 30 years in confinement. Since 1973, 150 people have been exonerated and freed from death row."
DP opponents rest their case.
Posted by: Michael R. Levine | Dec 18, 2014 11:55:28 AM
Oops, sorry your honor, may DP openents reopen the case and submit the following additional exhibit? Thank you:
"A judge has vacated the conviction of a 14-year-old boy who was executed for allegedly killing two girls some 70 years ago in South Carolina.
The judgment against George Stinney, the youngest person to be executed by an American state since the 1800s, effectively exonerates the boy, said family attorney Matt Burgess.
A black teen in the Jim Crow South, Stinney was accused of murdering two white girls, ages 7 and 11, as they hunted for wildflowers in Alcolu, about 50 miles southeast of Columbia.
Stinney, according to police, confessed to the crime.
No witness or evidence that might vindicate him was presented during a trial that was over in fewer than three hours. An all-white jury convicted him in a flash, 10 minutes.
"Given the particularized circumstances of Stinney's case, I find by a preponderance of the evidence standard, that a violation of the Defendant's procedural due process rights tainted his prosecution," wrote Circuit Judge Carmen Tevis Mullen in her decision, dated Tuesday.
She said that sentencing a 14-year-old to the death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
Earlier this year, attorneys for Stinney's family had asked for a new trial, saying the boy's confession was coerced and that Stinney had an alibi, his sister, Amie Ruffner, who claims she was with Stinney when the murders occurred.
Ruffner, Stinney's sister, told CNN affiliate WLTX that she and Stinney saw Betty June Binnicker, 11, and Mary Emma Thames, 7, the day they died. Stinney and Ruffner were tending to their family's cow near some railroad tracks close to their home.
"They said, 'Could you tell us where we could find some maypops?' " Ruffner recalled. "We said, 'No,' and they went on about their business."
The girls were found the next day in a water-logged ditch with injuries to their head. Mary had a 2-inch laceration above her right eyebrow and a vertical laceration over her left, according to a 1944 medical examiners' report.
Ruffner told WLTX, police took Stinney and another of her brothers away in handcuffs while their parents were not at home. One brother was released, she said, while Stinney faced police questioning without his parents or a lawyer.
The police "were looking for someone to blame it on, so they used my brother as a scapegoat," Ruffner said."
Posted by: Michael R. Levine | Dec 18, 2014 11:59:11 AM
Michael- and a deafening silence followed ..... sad isn't it? Not even worth a headline on this blog apparently.
Posted by: peter | Dec 19, 2014 8:23:58 AM
