Texas will continue as the nation's leading state for executions.
With 6 executions scheduled for the 1st 3 months of 2012 — and more than twice as many executions as any other state last year — Texas continues to lead the nation in using capital punishment.
That's despite dropping to a 15-year low in 2011, with 13 executions, even as questions are raised nationwide about the wrongful conviction of inmates and as petitions call on the United States to abolish capital punishment. Last year, 43 prisoners were executed nationwide.
“Clearly, Texas is known as the capital of capital punishment,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, based in Washington, D.C.
“Ultimately, this stems from strong public support for the death penalty in Texas,” he said. “In almost every other state, the death penalty is used more selectively, more cautiously and with greater protections for defendants.”
Alabama, which had the 2nd-most executions, put 6 to death in 2011.
Other states with more than 1 execution were Ohio with 5, Georgia and Arizona each with 4, and Oklahoma, Florida and Mississippi each with 2, center statistics show.
The national numbers are down from 2010, when there were 46 executions nationwide (17 in Texas) and from 2009, when there were 52 (24 in Texas), according to the center.
“Executions have dropped by about 50 percent since the late 1990s,” Dieter said. “With a growing concern about whether some of those convicted are actually innocent, jurors, prosecutors, judges and legislators (are) more cautious about the use of the death penalty.”
That gives hope to opponents of capital punishment that Texas and other states at some point will end executions. “I think that we are in the very beginning phases in Texas of the end of the death penalty,” said Rick Halperin, the coordinator of Amnesty International's campaign against state death penalties. “It won't happen in this state anytime soon, but we are reaching a point where, sooner or later, it is going to end.”
Texas has executed more people than any other state: 477 since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. The states closest to Texas in total number of executions are Virginia, with 109, and Oklahoma, with 96, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Recently, at least one drug used in lethal injections — sodium thiopental, a sedative — has been harder to obtain because the European Union began restricting its sale to countries that haven't abolished capital punishment.
While officials say the supply shortage has delayed some U.S. executions, many states such as Texas had already switched to a different sedative, pentobarbital. But recent reports show that the only U.S.-licensed manufacturer of it is selling the product to a different manufacturer, which could affect the availability of the drug.
More than 30 states still allow the death penalty, although only 27 have put someone to death in the past decade. Oregon, Illinois, New Jersey and New Mexico are among the states that stopped executions in recent years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
At its peak in recent years, Texas executed 40 inmates in 2000. Since then, the numbers have fluctuated.
Some attribute the wane to state prosecutors offering — and juries choosing — life-without-parole sentences, which became an option for those convicted of capital murder after Sept. 1, 2005.
Since then, nearly 400 people have been sentenced to life without parole, state records show.
In recent years, the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham prompted a renewed debate about the merits of capital punishment in Texas.
Willingham was executed Feb. 17, 2004, for setting a 1991 house fire that killed his 3 young daughters. Through the years, he maintained his innocence, and he reasserted that in his final statement just before he was executed.
Gov. Rick Perry, who described Willingham as a “monster,” and other officials said evidence supported the jury's decision. The state fire marshal has said the investigation was thorough and accurate; 2 arson experts who re-examined the investigation said it relied on outdated concepts and did not support a finding of arson.
The Texas Forensic Science Commission reviewed the case, concluding in 2011 that discredited scientific methods were used in the investigation, but an attorney general ruling stated that the commission had no jurisdiction.
Source: San Antonio Express-News, January 3, 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment