The new death penalty: COVID has now killed in nine months more US prisoners than capital punishment over last 50+ years

I am sad to report that we have passed yet another remarkable milestone in COVID prisoner deaths, which prompts another one of my series of "new death penalty" posts.  The Marshall Project continues the critical job of counting via this webpage deaths from coronavirus reported among prisoners, and as of Friday, December 4, this accounting had tabulated "at least 1568 deaths from coronavirus reported among prisoners." 

As I have said in other posts, this considerable and still ever-growing number is sad and disconcerting on its own terms, but it is even more remarkable given that it now amounts to more than the total  number of prisoner deaths resulting from carrying out formal death sentences in the United States for the entire "modern era" of capital punishment.  According to DPIC data, there were a total of 1527 executions from the 1970s through today.  (Because of Supreme Court litigation, there were no US executions between 1967 and 1977, and death sentences and executions since the 1970s are generally considered the "modern" capital punishment era in the United States.) 

As I have mentioned in prior posts, I think comparing capital punishment and COVID incarceration carnage is problematic in various ways.  All persons executed in the US in modern times have been convicted of the most aggravated forms of murder.  The vast majority of prisoners to die of COVID were not criminally responsible for a death (although, as noted here, some persons on California's death row are part of the COVID prisoner death count).  In a few older posts here and here, I noted that nearly half of the early reported deaths of federal prisoners involved individuals serving time for drug crimes.  

Another problem with comparing capital punishment and COVID incarceration carnage relates to the facct that correctional staff do not die from administering capital punishment, but many have died from COVID.  The Marshall Project reports "at least 105 deaths from coronavirus reported among prison staff."  I am still pleasantly surprised that this too-big number is not even larger, but I will be ever troubled by the thought that these COVID casualty numbers could have been lower if more aggressive depopulation efforts were taken to move the most vulnerable and least risky persons out of the super-spreader environment that prisons represent.

A few of many prior related posts:

• The new death penalty: COVID has now killed more US prisoners than capital punishment over last three decades (from Nov. 2020)
• The new death penalty: COVID has now killed as many US prisoners as has a quarter century of capital punishment (from Oct 2020)
• The new death penalty: COVID has now killed more US prisoners in months than the US death penalty has in the last two decades (from Aug 2020)
• The new death penalty: COVID has now killed more US prisoners in weeks than the US death penalty has in over a decade (from May 2020)
• The new death penalty: COVID has now killed more than 500 US prisoners and prison staff according to UCLA Law data (from May 2020)
• The new death penalty: COVID now a leading modern killer of California inmates on death row 
• From drug sentences to death sentences: documenting arbitrary and capricious drug war casualties
• Memorializing more drug war casualties: updating the federal drug sentences that COVID-19 turned into death sentences