Georgia led nation in number of executions in 2016

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja2ex-PCybelludYMrhFOi5V9UENpNBJb6VR0v7tzLIQjQNmIgOerT087uAVIytsShs_agSzN3GQ8AHKU0FS2srsN6wXAwycE_dV2fTWd3u6WyXPqB7YvkJJEx7irAMwiWuEw-AXab0FY/s1600/Georgia+death+chamber.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Georgia's death chamber" border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja2ex-PCybelludYMrhFOi5V9UENpNBJb6VR0v7tzLIQjQNmIgOerT087uAVIytsShs_agSzN3GQ8AHKU0FS2srsN6wXAwycE_dV2fTWd3u6WyXPqB7YvkJJEx7irAMwiWuEw-AXab0FY/s400/Georgia+death+chamber.jpg" title="Georgia's death chamber" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Georgia's death chamber</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;">Georgia led the nation in the number of executions carried out in 2016 by putting 9 men to death.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But as the number of executions has been high in Georgia in the past 2 years, the number of people on death row has shrunk and no new death sentences were imposed last year.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The last person sentenced to death in Georgia was Augusta resident Adrian Hargrove, 39, in March 2014. 6 years earlier, Hargrove stabbed to death pregnant teen Allyson Pederson and her mother and stepfather, Sharon and Andrew Hartley.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Fewer prosecutors seek death sentences now, District Attorney Ashley Wright said. When she filed notice of her intention to seek a death sentence if Steven Murray is convicted of murder for the slaying of a 71-year-old priest this year, it was only the 2nd death penalty notice filed in Georgia in 2016, Wright said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">2 changes in the law account for some of the decline - since 1993, jurors in death penalty cases have the option of imposing a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, and since 2010, prosecutors could seek a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole without first seeking a death sentence.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A look at the sentencing dates for the 58 men on Georgia's death row currently shows the effects. 27 of the inmates were sentenced to death in the 1990s and 18 were sentenced in the 2000s. But only 5 death row inmates were sentenced since 2010.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">When a prosecutor seeks to prosecute a homicide as a death penalty case, time slows to a crawl. It is not uncommon for cases to take several years to make it to trial, and if there is a conviction and death sentence, decades can pass before appeals are completed. And over the years, more death row inmates have had their sentences vacated and re-sentenced to life in prison than executed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Of the men executed in 2016, the years spent on death row ran from nine years by Steven Spears, who waived his appeals, to 36 years for Brandon Jones, who was 72 years old when executed Feb. 3.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">While few people have received death sentences in the past decade, the majority of Georgia's death row inmates are in the final stage of their appeal process, the federal habeas corpus. 30 of the 58 inmates are in the final rounds, although the final round can take years to litigate. Virgil Presnell has been on death row since 1976 for the rape and murder of a Cobb County child.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Another inmate with a pending federal habeas corpus petition is Reinaldo Rivera, a self-confessed serial killer sentenced to death in Richmond County Superior Court in 2004. His case is before U.S. District Judge J. Randal Hall.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A 3rd death row inmate from Augusta, Robert Arrington, was denied relief in his state habeas petition in December. He can appeal through the federal habeas corpus next. Arrington was sentenced to death in 2004 for the slaying of 46-year-old Kathy Hutchens in 2001. Arrington had previously served time in prison for killing his wife.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: The Augusta Chronicle, December 31, 2016</div><br /><div style="text-align: center;">⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: <a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com">deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a>.</div><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 204, 0); color: black; text-align: center; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4sspwgGptzvuHVklum5TwxKppRN-lIC5TN8RLZFq_B4ZOtBrX1ssXPNKQ6XpSyQFRJRtVQN45HMkpt3VX0JtOW0TovwxZAurG-AV6gh98IAXo7Ip6QlpkZr9WrM3_m943Mwy-gGxBAY/s1600/Find+us+Facebook.jpg" /></a></div></td> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULIPEaT_P6oIauxAZd17XRRxljesDLS7iIjdQXT7Xct99uHeohx4IYmiAB6S044gTjMDGSy50sL2vDzOyPZ-3vJj9zwcYQ2rgzJh9v1-QDiunKAQtLLLqJ83s38qN3HABxGIC8GsIOD0/s1600/Find+us+twitter.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_1427852018"></span><span id="goog_1427852019"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Opposed to Capital Punishment? 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Georgia led nation in number of executions in 2016

Georgia's death chamber Georgia led the nation in the number of executions carried out in 2016 by putting 9 men to death. But as the num...

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Countries with close links to the UK and EU continued to occupy the ranks of the world’s most prolific executioners in 2016

<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia7PVPcKXWdiBk2aCILt2E2edJA8KO5Rl2_mJ1xlwL6fQ50a64w5CvM91AoXNDXiBRymdPZWjaPvy9nZc2iKrh6IWHWFZ4kJM-S7NGjJMSoNo-oBTJHcmCbYK4TseIaPWlgalMfxBp8Pc/s1600/Iran+The+Execution+Line.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="The execution line - Iran" border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia7PVPcKXWdiBk2aCILt2E2edJA8KO5Rl2_mJ1xlwL6fQ50a64w5CvM91AoXNDXiBRymdPZWjaPvy9nZc2iKrh6IWHWFZ4kJM-S7NGjJMSoNo-oBTJHcmCbYK4TseIaPWlgalMfxBp8Pc/s400/Iran+The+Execution+Line.jpg" title="The execution line - Iran" width="400" /></a></div>Global executions in 2016 - Countries with close links to the UK and EU continued to occupy the ranks of the world’s most prolific executioners in 2016, research by international human rights group Reprieve has found.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In Saudi Arabia, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/18/at-least-150-people-executed-in-saudi-arabia-for-second-year-in-row" target="_blank">over 150 people were executed</a> for the second year running, including 47 people in one day in January 2016. Among those killed were juveniles and political protestors. Fears remain for the fate of at least three people sentenced to death as children – Ali al-Nimr, Dawood al-Marhoon and Abdullah al-Zaher – who still await beheading.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In Pakistan, the authorities continued to execute scores of prisoners from the country’s 8,000-strong death row. A total of 419 prisoners have been hanged since a moratorium on the death penalty was lifted in December 2014. Concerns remained over the strong risk of miscarriages of justice in Pakistan: earlier this year, the Supreme Court found that <a href="http://www.reprieve.org.uk/press/pakistan-acquits-two-hanged-men-insane-man-faces-execution/" target="_blank">two men who had been hanged were innocent</a>. Pakistan’s government claims its use of the death penalty is a response to terrorism, but Reprieve’s research found that <a href="http://www.reprieve.org.uk/press/94-hangings-pakistan-not-terrorism-cases-new-figures/" target="_blank">94% of prisoners recently hanged in Pakistan had nothing to do with terrorism</a>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In Iran, the government continued to hang hundreds of prisoners, nearly half of whom who were arrested for alleged drug offences. Reprieve continued to raise concerns that <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/eu-funding-could-be-linked-to-mass-executions-in-iran-a7453041.html" target="_blank">international funding for Iran’s anti-narcotics police may contribute to death sentences</a>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">China continues to keep the number of executions a closely-guarded secret, but is widely believed to remain the world leader, with the death toll estimated in the thousands. The UK this year signed an <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/china-uk-high-level-security-dialogue-official-statement/china-uk-high-level-security-dialogue-communique" target="_blank">agreement</a> to increase cooperation with China on security and crime, leading to potential risks that British assistance could contribute to the death penalty.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: justify;">Other countries of concern</h3><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The torture and sentencing to death of political protestors, and juveniles, continued apace in several countries with close ties to the UK.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Of particular concern are Bahrain – where several protestors await execution on the basis of forced ‘confessions’ – and Egypt. Reprieve has established that in the last three years, <a href="http://www.reprieve.org.uk/press/egypt-death-sentences-near-2000-amid-fears-irish-student/" target="_blank">the Egyptian judiciary has sentenced 1,857 to death</a>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In addition, 2016 saw alarming proposals in Kuwait to <a href="http://www.reprieve.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2016_11_16_INT-Letter-to-PM-Theresa-May-about-GCC-summit-as-sent.pdf">lower to 16 the age at which people can be sentenced to death</a>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Commenting, Maya Foa, a director of Reprieve, said:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“It is alarming that countries with close links to the UK and EU continued to occupy the ranks of the world’s most prolific executioners in 2016. From Saudi Arabia, Iran and China, to Pakistan, Egypt and Bahrain, we have found children on death row, innocent people hanged, drugs offences dealt with as capital crimes, and torture used to extract false confessions. Countries that oppose executions must do more in 2017 to ensure that their overseas security assistance does not contribute to others states use of the death penalty.”<br /><br /><h3>#1 - China. Executed: Unknown (Est. +1,000)</h3>The number of executions is a state secret, and the executions reported in the media are likely to be a fraction of those that are carried out. China continues to execute more people than any other country in the world.<br /><br /><h3>#2 - Iran. Executed: 534+</h3>The actual number of executions is likely to be higher in Iran, given the government’s underreporting of executions and the holding of secret executions. Reprieve’s research shows that at least 211 of the hangings that took place in 2016 were for drugs offences, in violation of international law.<br /><br /><h3>#3 - Saudi Arabia. Executed: 154</h3>This execution total is close to last year’s record high of 158. Among those executed this year were at least 4 juveniles who were killed as part of a mass execution of 47 people in January. One of them, Ali al-Ribh, was arrested in school, tortured into a false ‘confession’ to protest-related charges, and executed.<br /><br /><h3>#4 - Iraq. Executed: 101+</h3>Ongoing armed conflict makes it impossible to obtain exact figures for Iraq, but Reprieve was able to establish that at least 101 executions took place in 2016. However, based on unconfirmed media reports, the real figure may be more than double this total.<br /><br /><h3>#5 - Pakistan. Executed: 87</h3>According to figures gathered by Reprieve, there had been 87 executions in 2016 as of December 6. This was a decrease since 2015, which saw Pakistan embark on an unprecedented execution spree, and leapfrog Saudi Arabia to become the world’s third most prolific executioner. The country lifted a six-year moratorium on the execution of civilians in December 2014.<br /><br /><h3>#6 - USA. Executed: 20</h3>The most prolific executioner <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/" target="_blank">among US states</a> was Georgia, which executed 9 people this year. Execution numbers fell to a record low amid growing concerns about the effectiveness of capital punishment. 2016 saw public support for the death penalty fall to under 50%, death sentences drop to a record low and every FDA-approved pharmaceutical company oppose the misuse of medicines in lethal injections, causing many states to put executions on hold.<br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Figures correct as of 20th December 2016.</i><br /><i><br /></i>➫ For Your Information:<b> </b>Upon reading the above article, Alan Shadrake, author of "<a href="http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.fr/2016/07/once-jolly-hangman-singapore-justice-in.html" target="_blank">Once a Jolly Hangman, Singapore Justice in the Dock</a>", contacted Death Penalty News on December 23, and submitted the following comment: "They forgot to mention Singapore!"<br /><br />Source: Reprieve, December 23, 2016. Reprieve is an international human rights organization.</div><br /><div style="text-align: center;">⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: <a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com">deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a>.</div><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 204, 0); color: black; text-align: center; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4sspwgGptzvuHVklum5TwxKppRN-lIC5TN8RLZFq_B4ZOtBrX1ssXPNKQ6XpSyQFRJRtVQN45HMkpt3VX0JtOW0TovwxZAurG-AV6gh98IAXo7Ip6QlpkZr9WrM3_m943Mwy-gGxBAY/s1600/Find+us+Facebook.jpg" /></a></div></td> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULIPEaT_P6oIauxAZd17XRRxljesDLS7iIjdQXT7Xct99uHeohx4IYmiAB6S044gTjMDGSy50sL2vDzOyPZ-3vJj9zwcYQ2rgzJh9v1-QDiunKAQtLLLqJ83s38qN3HABxGIC8GsIOD0/s1600/Find+us+twitter.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_1427852018"></span><span id="goog_1427852019"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Opposed to Capital Punishment? 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Countries with close links to the UK and EU continued to occupy the ranks of the world’s most prolific executioners in 2016

Global executions in 2016 - Countries with close links to the UK and EU continued to occupy the ranks of the world’s most prolific execution...

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US capital punishment fall to 40-year low in 2016

<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkBu3-pmv1QknN8Gd_H9VQIr3726mikiS-OEZcOvhZm_oOxE16L-gYbwRdNrWCL8u_CyeolNlwykgiiV9BVyeaiUDvDPQf0WlY6baTOgppYaxivgX5cSlESRPWGBTDhHnTkNAE1U398a8-/s1600/21st+century.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="326" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkBu3-pmv1QknN8Gd_H9VQIr3726mikiS-OEZcOvhZm_oOxE16L-gYbwRdNrWCL8u_CyeolNlwykgiiV9BVyeaiUDvDPQf0WlY6baTOgppYaxivgX5cSlESRPWGBTDhHnTkNAE1U398a8-/s400/21st+century.gif" width="400" /></a></div><b>Fewer death sentences were handed down in the US this year than at any time in the last four decades, a study finds.</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Only 30 such penalties were imposed in 2016, the lowest since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976 after a four-year hiatus.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Five states, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Florida and Missouri, carried out 20 executions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It continues a 20-year downward trend in US capital punishment, says the Death Penalty Information Center.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The new <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/" target="_blank">DPIC report</a> showed that not only have executions slowed or even halted in the vast majority of states, but juries and judges are sentencing fewer people to death.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"This year, death sentences will be lower than at any other time in the modern history of the American death penalty," says Robert Dunham, executive director of the DPIC and lead author of the study. "That, I think, is a big story."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After the US death penalty was reinstated 40 years ago, the number of death sentences and executions began steadily rising.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 1977, 137 death sentences were handed down.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The trend peaked in the 1990s, with 98 executions in 1999 and 315 new death sentences in 1996.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Then the downward trend began.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 2016, only 30 new death sentences were handed down, and 20 executions took place.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That was the fewest number of executions since 1991.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Of the five states that put inmates to death in 2016, Georgia led the way with nine executions, followed by Texas with seven, Alabama with two, and both Florida and Missouri executed one person.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">New death sentences are down 37% from 2015, according to the report, and fewer death sentences were imposed in 2016 "than in any other year since the Supreme Court declared US death penalty statutes unconstitutional in... 1972".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mr Dunham points out that the low number of new death sentences was notable as well.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Georgia, for example, sentenced no-one to death in 2016.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Texas had four new death sentences, which is very low for the state," he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Dallas and Harris counties, which is where Houston and Dallas are, imposed no new death sentences for only the second time since the 1980s."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The halt of executions in some states can be explained by the difficulty procuring legally acceptable <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-36292193" target="_blank">drugs needed for lethal injections in the US</a>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Many pharmaceutical companies refuse to provide them, and the European Union banned the export of the drugs to the US in 2011.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Some states have resorted to clandestine deals with compounding pharmacies or different drug cocktails, and a series of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-27215508" target="_blank">botched executions</a> in recent years has raised legal and ethical concerns about these practices.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0FjVeBIOCT0IeRv_uebT-eiYv2P42FwBBXWfUeMy8YSLHLDLtBOUhkvPcYTzYfr0Q5ahR_lMvra7hNAhbOPm07AeUS2T6PRe2daWyfcH-CncI6zEWwATiHc7_ZsHeTBeizEplZ9fOpbLS/s1600/break.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0FjVeBIOCT0IeRv_uebT-eiYv2P42FwBBXWfUeMy8YSLHLDLtBOUhkvPcYTzYfr0Q5ahR_lMvra7hNAhbOPm07AeUS2T6PRe2daWyfcH-CncI6zEWwATiHc7_ZsHeTBeizEplZ9fOpbLS/s400/break.gif" width="400" /></a></div>Legal challenges that can take decades to resolve and exonerations around the country have also slowed executions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So far there have been 156 men and women exonerated from death row in the US.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Lawyers cost an awful lot more than prison guards, and there is just enough ambivalence for state killing as a criminal punishment to make the due process standard higher than for other kinds of punishment," says Frank Zimring, a death penalty expert and professor at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The combination of high expense and low assurance has sort of taken the enthusiasm out."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">According to various polls, American opinions are roughly split when it comes to the death penalty.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/29/support-for-death-penalty-lowest-in-more-than-four-decades/" target="_blank">Pew Research Center poll</a> shows approval for the death penalty has declined from a high of 80% in the 1990s to only 49% in favour now.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">However, Robert Blecker, a death penalty supporter and professor at New York Law School, says that the majority of Americans still favour the use of capital punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"[Approval may be] down from an all-time high of 80%, but it's also up from the 1968 low," he says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"California supported it, Oklahoma put it in its constitution, and Nebraska reversed its own legislature.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"How much clearer evidence could you possibly want as to where American public opinion is?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">During this year's election season, three US states had items related to capital punishment on their ballots, and in all three states, death penalty proponents won big on election night.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nebraskans voted to bring their death penalty back after legislators <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-32910693" target="_blank">banned the practice</a> in 2015.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Californians voted to speed up their executions rather than abolish them.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In Oklahoma, voters approved new constitutional language to protect the use of capital punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mr Zimring concedes that the general public may not necessarily approve of the precipitous decline in the use of capital punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But he points out that when other nations abolished their death penalty it took some time for the general public to concur.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"When you study the western European decline of the death penalty, it turns out that public support for hanging people persists for almost 20 years after moral leadership abolishes the death penalty," he says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It takes a long time for public passions to catch up with the moral leadership of elites."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Although this year's figures continue to bolster the narrative that the American criminal justice system is increasingly turning away from the death penalty, the end of capital punishment may still be a long way off.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The end game is going to be long and expensive and in a deep way, unnecessary," says Mr Zimring.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"That's billions of dollars and many too many executions in the American future."</div><br />Source: <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38371479" target="_blank">BBC News</a>, Jessica Lussenhop, December 21, 2016<br /><br /><br /><h2>The Strange Case of the American Death Penalty</h2><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKwTmZcrR1QcpiLUbkxn6Jp_cHISVJuD2c8si4LKlVMC2Q_LQ79SVx2JJsdWv3QutacI-AciHorJQrt7FeW5EhT8Zw4CPG8Sq0_FEcBQLCQNXsUK_9gvhjg3aZSXbE7Kr7XXeaijeJF4dK/s1600/k5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKwTmZcrR1QcpiLUbkxn6Jp_cHISVJuD2c8si4LKlVMC2Q_LQ79SVx2JJsdWv3QutacI-AciHorJQrt7FeW5EhT8Zw4CPG8Sq0_FEcBQLCQNXsUK_9gvhjg3aZSXbE7Kr7XXeaijeJF4dK/s400/k5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>It’s a paradoxical moment in the history of the death penalty in the United States. The number of executions has dwindled to just a few, but the voters, even in the most liberal states, seem to want the punishment to remain on the books. That’s the message of the <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/" target="_blank">annual report</a> from the Death Penalty Information Center, which produces the most comprehensive analysis of the subject each year.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The headline on the report—“Another Record Decline in Death Penalty Use”—notes that the remarkable fall in the number of executions and death sentences is part of a longer trend, one that continued this year. The numbers were the lowest in the modern era of the American death penalty, after a period, between 1972 and 1976, when the Supreme Court put a stop to executions. There were just twenty executions in the United States in 2016, down from a peak of ninety-eight, in 1999. Even more remarkable, just thirty people were sentenced to death this year, compared with three hundred and fifteen in 1996. Indeed, as the report further notes, “Fewer new death sentences were imposed in the past decade than in the decade preceding the Supreme Court’s invalidation of capital punishment in 1972.” The reduction in death sentences means that the decline in executions is likely to continue as well, because the pipeline of new cases is not as full.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Despite these numbers, death-penalty abolitionists also received a host of bad news this year. In 2015, after a long political struggle, the Nebraska state legislature (which is unicameral) repealed the death penalty. But supporters of capital punishment put the issue on the ballot in the 2016 election, and more than sixty per cent of the voters supported its restoration. Voters in California were asked to address two contradictory initiatives concerning the death penalty. One would have ended executions in the state once and for all; the other sought to remove some of the legal barriers that have prevented executions from proceeding quickly, or really at all, in the state. The abolition initiative failed, with fifty-three per cent of the voters opposed, and the law for expediting the death penalty passed, with slightly more than fifty-one per cent of the vote. (It’s not clear what, if any, practical difference passage of the initiative will mean. The legal standoffs in California are likely to continue. There are <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/state_by_state" target="_blank">seven hundred and forty-one</a> people on death row in the state, but there hasn’t been an execution there since 2006.)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The debate over the death penalty seems to have taken on some of the characteristics of the Presidential race this year, as a contest between populists and élitists. Judges play the part of the élites in this particular debate, and the judiciary, as a whole, has shown ever-greater hostility toward approving executions. This year, the Supreme Court ruled for prisoners in several high-profile death-penalty decisions, holding that racial bias infected jury selection, in Foster v. Chatman, a case from Georgia, and rejecting Florida’s system of allowing judges to impose the death penalty even when jurors support life in prison, in Hurst v. Florida. (The Florida legislature sought to correct the defects identified by the Supreme Court in the Hurst case, only to have the Florida Supreme Court overrule the new law as well.) Delaware’s Supreme Court also nullified its state’s death-penalty law this year.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqOe-7Oh76c4SgqTgbQPvj9WuZvXdUNsVzT21T8yBzDqmoborj19YG7Orkhyphenhyphen0OskknQx8gVCBIh7VhTeBimD1pCwnaIPnruBRS4-MtZ-ySFncOH6CFrCpLMuzLVQgxXEINFTxNf9eu3Fg/s1600/right+trick.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="321" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqOe-7Oh76c4SgqTgbQPvj9WuZvXdUNsVzT21T8yBzDqmoborj19YG7Orkhyphenhyphen0OskknQx8gVCBIh7VhTeBimD1pCwnaIPnruBRS4-MtZ-ySFncOH6CFrCpLMuzLVQgxXEINFTxNf9eu3Fg/s400/right+trick.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>But, as the election results in California and Nebraska illustrate, the voters—the populists—continue to back the death penalty, as does the President-elect. (Donald Trump notoriously called for the execution of the <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/donald-trump-and-the-central-park-five" target="_blank">Central Park Five</a>, fourteen-, fifteen-, and sixteen-year-olds who were charged with a high-profile rape and beating, in 1989. Even though the five were later exonerated, Trump, during this year’s campaign, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/opinion/why-trump-doubled-down-on-the-central-park-five.html" target="_blank">reiterated his belief in their guilt</a>.) The Death Penalty Information Center report notes that public-opinion polls show some decline in support for the death penalty, but the opposition has never achieved close to a majority. And, notwithstanding ambiguous poll numbers, politicians from Trump to Barack Obama understand that support for the death penalty, at least in some form, is less politically risky than opposition to it. (Obama, for example, has supported executions for “extraordinarily heinous crimes.”) Trump’s victory, and those of other Republicans, can only reinforce that view.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Many factors have led to the decline in the death penalty in recent years: less crime over all, with less fear among the public as a result; DNA exonerations leading jurors to pause before imposing death; the reluctance of pharmaceutical companies to provide lethal-injection drugs and the resulting search (still under way) for a drug protocol that passes constitutional muster; the length and expense of the appeals mandated by the Supreme Court. All those reasons for the decline remain, but so, too, does the United States remain a country that has had the death penalty in effect for virtually all of its history. That’s not likely to change, either. The death penalty may keep shrinking, but it will probably never entirely go away.</div><br />Source: <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-strange-case-of-the-american-death-penalty" target="_blank">The New Yorker</a>, Jeffrey Toobin, December 21, 2016<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: <a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com">deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a>.</div><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 204, 0); color: black; text-align: center; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4sspwgGptzvuHVklum5TwxKppRN-lIC5TN8RLZFq_B4ZOtBrX1ssXPNKQ6XpSyQFRJRtVQN45HMkpt3VX0JtOW0TovwxZAurG-AV6gh98IAXo7Ip6QlpkZr9WrM3_m943Mwy-gGxBAY/s1600/Find+us+Facebook.jpg" /></a></div></td> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULIPEaT_P6oIauxAZd17XRRxljesDLS7iIjdQXT7Xct99uHeohx4IYmiAB6S044gTjMDGSy50sL2vDzOyPZ-3vJj9zwcYQ2rgzJh9v1-QDiunKAQtLLLqJ83s38qN3HABxGIC8GsIOD0/s1600/Find+us+twitter.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_1427852018"></span><span id="goog_1427852019"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Opposed to Capital Punishment? 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US capital punishment fall to 40-year low in 2016

Fewer death sentences were handed down in the US this year than at any time in the last four decades, a study finds. Only 30 such penalties ...

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