US executions at lowest level in quarter century: report

Washington: Executions in the United States have fallen from a peak 16 years ago to a quarter century low, reflecting a broad change in public attitudes that has raised the hopes of death-penalty opponents, a report said Wednesday.

Use of the ultimate punishment has declined by several measures, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).

Only six states -- of the 31 where the death penalty is legal in America -- have carried out executions this year.

Total executions have fallen by 20 percent since last year, from 35 to 28, the fewest since 1991. And 86 percent of all executions took place in only three states: Texas (13), Missouri (six) and Georgia (five).

Death sentences are also in sharp decline: as of December 15, American courts have called for capital punishment in 49 cases, a 33 percent drop from 2014.

That is the smallest number since the early 1970s, when the US Supreme Court temporarily suspended the death penalty.

"These are not just annual blips in statistics, but reflect a broad change in attitudes about capital punishment across the country," said Robert Dunham, the DPIC's executive director and author of the report.

The center tracks death penalty data, but takes no position on capital punishment.  

One factor behind the downward trend is a shortage of the drugs widely used in lethal injections, which pharmaceutical firms, most of them European, have refused to supply for this purpose. The death penalty has been abolished in every European country except Belarus.

And several US states suspended the use of the death penalty after a series of badly botched executions over the past two years shocked the American public.

Those cases included that of Dennis McGuire, who died in an Ohio prison after gasping repeatedly for 25 minutes in clear agony; Clayton Lockett, who succumbed in Oklahoma only after 43 minutes of writhing and convulsions; and Joseph Wood, whose death throes in Arizona lasted two hours.

Even in Texas, the state that executes more than any other, things are changing rapidly.

"Texas has gone from a peak of 48 new death sentences in 1999 to the fewest sentences on record" -- three -- this year, said Kristin Houle, executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

The reported noted that exonerations of death row prisoners underscore the death penalty's "fatal flaw."

Six death row prisoners were exonerated of all charges this year, and 156 have been exonerated or freed from death row since the death penalty was reinstated in 1973.

At least 70 who faced execution this year received stays, reprieves or commutation, and the number of prisoners on death row fell below 3,000 for the first time since 1995, the report said.