Death Penalty Update

I stopped doing these because they tend to depress me. My last death penalty post was in September of 2011 shortly before the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia.

The big news is that Connecticut is poised to abolish the death penalty despite polls that claim 62% of the population think that would be a mistake. The State Senate passed the bill on April 5; the House is expected to follow and the governor is expected to sign the measure. However the legislation is not retroactive and would not affect the eleven men currently on death row. Connecticut has only executed one person since the Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty in 1976 and that was what is known as a “volunteer,” someone who foregoes the full appeals process.

Connecticut would be the fifth state in five years to abolish the death penalty joining New Jersey, New Mexico, Illinois and New York. It would leave only New Hampshire and Pennsylvania in the Northeast Region with the death penalty. New Hampshire hasn’t executed anyone under its current statute and Pennsylvania has executed three, all volunteers.

There were a total of 43 executions in 2011, down from 46 in 2010. Of the 43, 31 (72%) were in the South and 13 (30%) were in Texas. There have been 12 executions so far in 2012, 10 (83%) of which have been in the South and 4 (33%) of which have been in Texas.

Since 1976 there have been 1289 execution. 1058 (82%) have been in the South; 150 (12%) have been in the Midwest; 77 (6%) have been in the West and 4 (0.3%) have been in the Northeast. 481 (37%) of the executions have been in Texas. Nine of the ten states with the most executions are in the South. The tenth state is Ohio, in 8th place with 46 (3.6%).

So, have the murder rates in the four states that have eliminated the death penalty sky rocketed? Nope, there hasn’t been any significant change. If anything they’ve gone down as part of the general trend of the murder rate going down.