Execution rates decline as public attitudes shift
Only 20 executions were carried out in 2016
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Your support makes all the difference.Twenty death sentences were recorded across the United States this year compared to 49 executions in 2015, according to the annual report from the Death Penalty Information Center, recording the lowest number since the early 1990s.
Next year, analysts predict that legal battles and the sales ban of execution drugs will keep the number of executions down to historic lows.
"I think we are watching a major political climate change concerning capital punishment and it's reflected among reduced death sentences across the country," Robert Dunham, the group's executive director, told the Associated Press this week.
"As fewer states use the death penalty and as it's used more sparingly in the states that do, we can expect long-term numbers to remain low and perhaps continue to drop.”
While the number of executions are declining across the country, some states are more willing to carry out the death sentences to people convicted of violent criminal acts.
Los Angeles County has recorded 36 new death sentences since 2010, setting the highest rate in the nation, the Los Angeles Times reports. This year, juries imposed death sentences on four convicted murderers in the county including Lonnie Franklin Jr, who was convicted of killing 10 women.
Earlier this year, voters in the overwhelmingly blue state rejected a proposed measure, 53%-47%, to abolish the death penalty and make life without the possibility of parole the maximum punishment for murder.
“We are on a path toward constitutional abolition,” Jordan Steiker, director of the Capital Punishment Center at the University of Texas, told Reuters. “The length of that path will be dictated by uncertainties concerning the Supreme Court’s composition and how much the withering of the death penalty continues.”