US executions, death sentences on decline: report

[struggle4progress]

WASHINGTON (AP) — ... The nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center reports 37 executions in 2008, with no more expected for the remainder of the year. That's down 12 percent from 42 in 2007 and a 30 percent drop from 2006 ...

... All but two of the 37 executions this year occurred in the South and Texas, with Ohio providing the sole exception. Half of the executions occurred in Texas, where 18 inmates were put to death ...

All of the executions in 2008 occurred after April 16, when a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the use of lethal injections ended what had been a de facto moratorium in place for almost seven months ...

What is more important, <Richard Bonnie, a law professor at the University of Virginia and an expert on capital punishment> said, is the drop in death sentences. That data is unaffected by the moratorium, which banned only executions, not death sentences handed down by judges and juries ...

http://www.sunnewspapers.net/articles/fnnews.aspx?articleID=7578&fnpg=0

[amdezurik]

1. yeah Texas is pretty quick on the draw to kill folks

that way when it shown some of them were innocent they can just shrug their collective shoulders and giggle as they skip away...

[JonQ]

2. Average time on death row

for inmates in Texas: 10.26 years.

Yep, practically a lynching right there.

{source: Texas Department of Criminal Justice}

[amdezurik]

3. did you not read further?

just below where they had 2 guys there less thena year and 2 guys wiht over 20 years each on Death row? kind of an extreme spread for you to attempt a stupidly snarky "come-back", which gets a big old FAIL

[JonQ]

5. Really 2 guys?

wow that really proves your case. No way those could be considered outliers (it's not like they were specifically mentioned as being on record for the shortest time spent on death row or anything and thus are aytpical). Nope, because Texas has only executed 4 people, those 2 examples are in fact statistically relevant.

:sarcasm:

[struggle4progress]

6. ... Texas is home to more verified wrongful convictions than any other state in the union ...

http://ipoftexas.org/texas-cases/

[sharp_stick]

4. I think VA is faster

at least they used to be, for awhile IIRC it was less than 5 years from conviction to dead. They just don't have as many on Death Row.