- December 11

U.S. Executes 85 Prisoners in 2000

By PETE YOST,

WASHINGTON - Death row executions dropped to 85 last year, 13 fewer than in 1999, the Justice Department (news - web sites) reported Tuesday. The decline signals that wrongful murder convictions and a lower homicide rate are driving down the use of the ultimate punishment.

 Forty of last year's 85 executions took place in Texas and 11 were in Oklahoma, the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics reported. There were executions in a dozen other states.

 Just 214 death sentences were handed out in the United States last year, compared to 280 in 1999 and 303 in 1998.

 ``This would be the lowest number of death sentences imposed in the country since 1980'' when the figure was 173, said Columbia University law professor James Liebman.

 There is a growing concern in courts, governors' offices and state legislatures about mistakes in death penalty cases, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

 The total number of executions for 2001 will be 66, Dieter predicted.

 Experts point to cases like that of a retarded Virginia man who confessed to murder but was found innocent through DNA tests a few days before his scheduled execution. In Illinois, a death row inmate was released after an investigation by journalism students at Northwestern established his innocence.

 ``As more and more flaws in the death penalty are being exposed, there is on the margin, less willingness to request or impose the death penalty in many cases,'' said Northwestern University law professor Lawrence Marshall, director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions.

 Public opinion polls show less support for the death penalty.

 ``The clamor for the death penalty is not quite as loud because the homicide rate is lower,'' said James Alan Fox, Lipman professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University.

 Homicides in 1991 totaled 24,700, but were down to 15,000 last year.

 ``Ten years ago we weren't asking questions about the death penalty because we wanted the homicide rate to be controlled, but now Americans say let's look at the process,'' said Fox.

 The figures for 2000:

 -Those executed included 49 whites, including six white Hispanics; 35 blacks; and one American Indian.

 -Eighty of the executions were by lethal injection and five by electrocution.

 -Aside from Texas and Oklahoma, there were eight executions in Virginia; six in Florida; five in Missouri; four in Alabama; three in Arizona; two in Arkansas; and one each in Delaware, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and California.

 -Thirty-seven states and the federal government held 3,539 men and 54 women on death row at the end of last year, 53 more than the year before. California had the most with 586, followed by 450 in Texas. The federal system held 18.

 Death penalty opponent were pleased with the trend.

 ``This is the most encouraging news'' in that ``support for the death penalty is not on an increase but clearly on a decrease,'' said Steven Hawkins, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, a lobbying group.

 Since the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 683 prisoners in 31 states had been executed through the end of last year. Executions have taken place in about 10 percent of the cases where the inmate is eligible for execution.

 More than a third of the others were not executed because of a successful appeal, commutation of sentence or death other than execution.

 The number of offenders under a death sentence increased 52 percent from 1990 through 2000 as prison populations nationwide grew by 79 percent.

 As of last Dec. 31, all of those under a death sentence for whom information was available had committed murder and most had a prior criminal background.

 Sixty-four percent had a prior felony conviction and 8 percent had been convicted of a prior homicide.