PENA DI MORTE: USA, DIMINUITO IL NUMERO DELLE ESECUZIONI  MENO CONDANNE A MORTE E MENO APPOGGIO DELLA POPOLAZIONE

Huntsville, 19 dic. - Il numero delle esecuzioni negli Stati Uniti si e' lievemente ridotto quest'anno, con un totale di 65 condanne a morte, a fronte delle 71 eseguite nel 2002. Secondo quanto detto alla Dpa da Richard Dieter, direttore del Centro di informazione sulla pena di morte a Washington, non e' diminuito solamente il numero delle esecuzioni, ma anche quello delle nuove condanne pronunciate dai tribunali.

Inoltre, dai sondaggi risulta che si sta riducendo anche il sostegno della popolazione alla pena capitale.

L'ultima esecuzione dell'anno era prevista ieri in Virginia, ma e' stata rimandata perche' gli avvocati di James Reid, 57 anni e colpevole di omicidio, hanno sostenuto che le tre iniezioni letali previste sottopongono l'imputato ad una morte crudele in quanto bloccano la respirazione.

Da quando e' stata reintrodotta la pena di morte nel 1976 sono state eseguite 885 condanne negli Stati Uniti, delle quali la maggior parte in Texas.

2003: The Year in Death

STARTING IN 2000, the number of executions in this country took a two-year nosedive. After climbing to a peak of 98 in 1999, executions fell by nearly a third by 2001. Over the past two years, however, this decline has flattened out. After executing 85 people in 2000 and 66 people in2001, states and the federal government put 71 people to death last year and 65 this year, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center.

This flattening makes it look as if the decline in capital punishment has been arrested, but the story is more complicated. Beneath these numbers, an important recent trend in capital punishment appears to be sharpening: The death penalty is growing ever more regional.

In 2002, 65 percent of executions took place in only three states --Texas,

 Oklahoma and Missouri. This year Texas alone accounted for 24 executions.

 The top three states -- Texas, Oklahoma (which killed 14) and North Carolina

 (seven) -- together carried out 69 percent of the executions nationally.

Add in Georgia, Florida, Ohio and Alabama, each of which killed three, and 88 percent of the executions have been accounted for.  Only 11 states -- along with the federal government -- carried out executions, the lowest number since 1993. In other words, even as the number of executions holds relatively steady, fewer states are doing more of the dirty work.

This is good news for those who believe, as we do, that capital punishment ought to be abolished. Right now the political consensus in most states does not exist to get rid of it. Politicians are committed to the death penalty, and solid majorities of the public support it as well. The best prospect for  long-term change lies in the ongoing demonstration that the death penalty  isn't necessary or effective and carries great dangers. States with moribund  death penalties can evolve over time into states without death penalties  with no great disruption to their criminal justice systems or to the expectations of their electorates. The fewer states that execute people regularly, the more exceptional become those like Texas and Oklahoma -- which insist on using capital punishment as a routine instrument of justice.

This year also saw some significant breakthroughs in efforts to reform the death penalty, a movement that has been driven by the flood of wrongly convicted people freed from death row. (Ten more people this year were freed because of serious innocence questions.) Most dramatic was the mass clemency granted last January by outgoing Illinois governor George Ryan, who has since been indicted on corruption charges. Mr. Ryan pardoned or commuted the sentences of every one of the state's 171 death row inmates, on the theory that the system in his state had been so gravely flawed that no capital sentence should be carried out. The legislature followed up with serious reforms, and the new governor, Rod Blagojevich, has kept a moratorium on executions in place.

Congress, meanwhile, has also begun taking serious steps. A bipartisan compromise broke the logjam over the Innocence Protection Act, an important bill that Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) has been pushing to facilitate DNA testing and to improve the quality of capital defense lawyering. This raises the prospect that the bill, which the House passed in November as part of the Advancing Justice Through DNA Technology Act 2003, could become law in 2004. Capital punishment in America will not disappear all of a sudden. But if serious reform efforts continue and the penalty becomes ever more regional in its application, it could begin to fade away.