This year apparently saw the least number of executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. No surprise: Texas carried out over half of those 37 executions. The remaining were all in the South, except for two in Ohio.
Capital punishment needs to end. It's simply unethical, without question. Even if you believe the State has the right to murder people, the deeply unjust manner in which those sentences are handed out is reason enough to suspend the practice.
The Death Penalty Information Center estimates 111 defendants will be sentenced to death this year, the lowest figure since executions were reinstated in 1976.
Just 37 people were put to death in 2008, compared with a record amount of 98 executions in 1999. Texas carried out nearly half of this year's executions, and one state outside the South carried out executions -- Ohio, with two. No executions are scheduled for the rest of the year.
The reduced figures were helped by a de facto Supreme Court moratorium that put off any capital punishment for the first four months of 2008.
The high court ruled in April that lethal injection procedures in Kentucky were constitutional, lifting an unofficial ban on the procedure that had been in place for about eight months while the justices considered the appeal. That case involved convicted murderers Ralph Baze and Thomas Bowling, who both remain on death row in that state.
Executions resumed nationwide in May.
"We were surprised that the surge in executions that we expected after Baze did not happen," said Richard Dieter, Executive Director of DPIC, a non-profit resource organization that opposes capital punishment.
"Courts, legislatures and the public are increasingly skeptical about the death penalty, whether those concerns are based on innocence, inadequate legal representation, costs, or a general feeling that the system isn't fair or accurate."
