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Year End Report THE DEATH PENALTY IN 2015: YEAR END REPORT DEATH PENALTY USE IN 2015 DECLINES SHARPLY FEWEST EXECUTIONS, FEWEST DEATH SENTENCES, AND FEWEST STATES EMPLOYING THE DEATH PENALTY IN DECADES KEY FINDINGS Executions By Year • There were 28 100 executions in 6 Peak: 98 in 1999 states, the fewest 80 since 1991. ⬇70 60 • There were 49 death sentences in 40 2015, 33% below the modern death 20 28 in 2015 penalty low set last year. 0 • New death 1976 1979 1982 1985 1988 1991 1994 1997 2000 2003 2006 2009 2012 2015 sentences in the past decade are lower than in the Death Sentences By Year decade preceding 350 Peak: 315 in 1996 the Supreme 300 Court’s invalidation of capital 250 ⬇266 punishment in 200 1972. 150 • Six more former 100 death row inmates 49 in 2015 (projected) were exonerated of 50 all charges. 1974 1977 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010 2013 2015 THE DEATH PENALTY IN 2015: YEAR END REPORT U.S. DEATH PENALTY DECLINE ACCELERATES IN 2015 By all measures, use of and support for the death penalty Executions by continued its steady decline in the United States in 2015. The 2015 2014 State number of new death sentences imposed in the U.S. fell sharply from already historic lows, executions dropped to Texas 13 10 their lowest levels in 24 years, and public opinion polls revealed that a majority of Americans preferred life without Missouri 6 10 parole to the death penalty. Opposition to capital punishment polled higher than any time since 1972. Georgia 5 2 The numbers also pointed to the increasing geographic Florida 2 8 isolation of the death penalty and its disproportionate overuse by a handful of jurisdictions. Fewer states and Oklahoma 1 3 counties imposed death sentences, and 93% of executions were concentrated in just 4 states. 16% of all the new death Virginia 1 0 sentences imposed in the country came from a single California county and — while nearly every state requires Ohio 0 1 juries to unanimously agree to a death sentence — more than Arizona 0 1 a quarter of the nation’s new death sentences were imposed by judges in two states after juries did not unanimously agree Totals 28 35 on death. Nearly two-thirds of the new death sentences in the U.S. in 2015 were imposed in the same 2% of American counties that have disproportionately accounted for more than half of all U.S. death sentences in the past. The national trend towards abolition of the death penalty in law or practice continued: Nebraska legislatively abolished the death penalty; the Connecticut Supreme Court declared its death penalty unconstitutional; and Pennsylvania joined three other states in imposing gubernatorial moratoria on executions. For the first time in a generation, there were fewer than 3,000 men and women on death rows nationwide. Six more men and women were exonerated from death row. And as two Justices of the Supreme Court issued an historic opinion inviting systemic constitutional challenges to the death penalty in America, numerous additional states put executions on hold because of problems in obtaining execution drugs or in administering their execution protocols. NEW DEATH SENTENCES New death sentences in the United States have fallen to historic lows. With less than two weeks remaining in 2015, and few cases pending, 14 states and the federal government have imposed 49 new death sentences. This was a 33% decline from the 73 death sentences imposed in 2014 — itself already a 40-year 49 new death sentences were imposed low. The number of new death sentences imposed in the U.S. in 2015 was the fewest in 2015, a 33% decline from what was in any single year since 1973, when states already a 40-year low. began enacting new capital sentencing statutes in response to the Supreme Court’s DEATH PENALTY INFORMATION CENTER 2! THE DEATH PENALTY IN 2015: YEAR END REPORT 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia declaring all existing Death Row By State 2015 death penalty statutes unconstitutional. New death sentences (7/1/15) were 84% below the 315 death sentences imposed during the California 746 peak death-sentencing year of 1996 (see graph, Death Florida 400 Sentences by Year, on page 1). Texas 265 This was the fifth consecutive year in which fewer than Alabama 195 100 death sentences were imposed in the U.S. The country Pennsylvania 183 has now imposed fewer death sentences in the past ten N. Carolina 156 years than in the decade of the 1960s leading up to the Ohio 146 Furman decision (see graph, Death Sentences by Decade, Arizona 124 below). Georgia 84 Outlier practices in 3 states, California (14), Florida (9), Louisiana 83 and Alabama (6) accounted for more than half of all new death sentences in the country. 13 of the California death Nevada 78 verdicts were concentrated in 4 Southern California counties, Tennessee 72 each of which ranks among the 15 U.S. counties with the US Government 62 highest number of death sentences since 2010. Riverside Oklahoma 50 County, California, by itself imposed 8 death sentences, 16% Mississippi 48 of all the new death sentences in the nation and more than S. Carolina 44 were imposed by any state but Florida. 63% of the new death Missouri 31 sentences (31) came from the tiny 2% of counties responsible Arkansas 36 for more than half of all the death-sentenced inmates in the Oregon 35 United States. Kentucky 34 Delaware 17 Death Sentences By Decade Indiana 14 Connecticut* 12 (Average per year over 10 years) Idaho 11 300 Nebraska 10 284.2 Kansas 9 Utah 9 225 Washington 9 215.8 212.6 Virginia 8 US Military 6 150 S. Dakota 3 Colorado 3 106 Montana 2 75 97.3 New Mexico* 2 New Hampshire 1 Wyoming 1 0 1961-1970 1976-1985 1986-1995 1996-2005 2006-2015 Total 2,984 Fewer death sentences were imposed in the U.S. in the past decade *abolished death penalty than in the decade before Furman v. Georgia, when the Supreme Court data from NAACP Legal Defense declared existing death penalty statutes unconstitutional. and Educational Fund DEATH PENALTY INFORMATION CENTER 3! THE DEATH PENALTY IN 2015: YEAR END REPORT More than 20% of death sentences imposed in the U.S. since 2010 have been the product of non-unanimous jury recommendations of death — a practice barred in all states but Florida, Alabama, and Delaware. Those states collectively imposed 16 death sentences this year. If they had required unanimous jury death verdicts, as in every other death penalty state, 3 would have been imposed. More than a quarter of all U.S. death sentences in 2015 were cases in which juries did not unanimously recommend death. Arizona (3) and Oklahoma (3) were the only other states to impose more than two new death sentences in 2015. Even states that conducted executions exhibited signs of the death penalty’s continuing decline, imposing half as many new death sentences as the number of executions they carried out. Texas imposed only two new death sentences in 2015,1 the fewest ever under its current death penalty statute and 96% below its peak total of 48 in 1999. 18 death penalty states imposed no death sentences in 2015, including 3 — Georgia, Missouri, and Virginia — that had conducted executions. Juries in Colorado and Washington imposed life sentences after protracted capital trials in 4 high- profile cases, and neither state imposed any death sentences this year. Other death penalty states that imposed no death sentences in 2015 were: Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming. EXECUTIONS Executions dropped by 20% compared to 2014, from 35 to 28, marking the first time in 24 years that fewer than 30 executions were carried out in the United States. It was 12th time in the past 16 years that the number of executions has declined. The number of states conducting executions also continued to decline, and executions were concentrated in fewer and fewer states. Only 6 states carried out any executions in 2015, the fewest number since 1988, and 70% below the 20 states that In 2015, only 6 states carried out executed inmates in 1999. Three states, Texas executions, the fewest number of (13), Missouri (6), and Georgia (5) accounted states in more than a quarter for 86% of the country’s executions in 2015 — and just four states, Texas (23), Missouri (16), century. Florida (10), and Georgia (7) have conducted 89% of all U.S. executions in the past two years. At least 70 death-row prisoners with execution dates in 2015 received stays, reprieves, or commutations, 2.5 times the number who were executed. 1A Bexar County, TX, jury returned a verdict of death for a third defendant, Mark Anthony Gonzalez, on October 20. However, whether he is formally sentenced to death is dependent upon the outcome of a hearing on his mental competency, which the trial court has scheduled for January 2016. DEATH PENALTY INFORMATION CENTER 4! THE DEATH PENALTY IN 2015: YEAR END REPORT Three-fifths (60%) of those executed in 2015 were black or Latino. Only 6 of the 28 executions (21%) involved cases in which black victims had been murdered, even though generally almost half of murder victims in the U.S. are black. 29% of the executions (8) involved interracial murders of at least one white victim. PUBLIC OPINION AND THE DEATH PENALTY Support for the death penalty, as measured by public opinion polls, continued to fall in 2015.
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