Death Penalty - Capital Punishment

Death penalty is one of the cruel and immoral capital punishment that is exercised by the state’s laws. And the US is one of the few 23 countries that practices the death penalty. However death sentences and executions are at their second lowest level in the US in 25 years — symbolic of the “long-term change in capital punishment in the United States.” A new report from the Death Penalty Information Center shows there were just 23 executions in 2017 — the second lowest total since 1991. So what brought about these changes? There are two things that helped to decrease the number of executions in the US, one the decline of public support for the death penalty and two legal changes to death sentences.

The continued trend of relatively low rates of executions and death sentencing comes as public support for the death penalty fell to its lowest level in 45 years, according to an October 2017 Gallup Poll, which found that 55 percent of Americans endorse capital punishment which used to 80 precent in 1994. Across the country, more than 70 percent of scheduled executions were not carried out because of exonerations, commutations or pardons, or because the executions were rescheduled. Four people on death row were exonerated this year, the DPIC report notes. Those cases "highlighted systemic problems of racial bias, flawed forensic testimony, inadequate access to quality representation, and prosecutorial misconduct," the report says. For instance, Rodricus Crawford was exonerated after he received a new trial, in part because the lead prosecutor in his original case had "unconstitutionally excluded black jurors on the basis of race." Other men were exonerated after trials that depended on circumstantial evidence or contradictory testimony, or after it was revealed that prosecutors had withheld exculpatory evidence. There many people in America have been opposing the death penalty because they see it as immoral and therefore many jurors tend to vote for life in prison rather than the death penalty.

Also legal changes helped to bring down the rates. In Florida, a judge can now only give the death penalty if a jury unanimously recommends it. In Alabama judges can no longer override a jury’s decision to recommend life sentences instead of death. As NPR's Debbie Elliott has reported, some states that want to carry out executions are being slowed by the limited availability of drugs permitted for use in lethal injections. Pharmacies are refusing to provide the deadly combinations of paralytics and fast-acting sedatives needed to put prisoners to death The decline executions could really be seen by looking at Houston’s Harris County executions where they accounted for 23 percent Texas’ executions. In 2017, however, the county known as the "death penalty capital of the world" executed and sentenced to death an astonishing number of people: zero. Kim Ogg who ran in 2016 and became the county’s district attorney as a reformist candidate has pledged to use the death penalty in a more judicious manner than her predecessors, though the longtime prosecutor didn’t say she would abandon it altogether. However these kinds of changes in laws shows that more and more states across the country are starting to bring about reforms to existing state laws that will reduce the ability of giving death sentences to criminals.

In conclusion the death penalty is a seen by more and more people as an in humane practice of punishment that needs to end. This decline in execution came about for two reasons one the public support has been declining and therefore leading less jury approval of death sentences and two legal changes to the systems are helping to keep the rates low. It seems nowadays that the country is heading towards a future where the death penalty won’t exist with people and state’s refusing to give the death penalty.