USA: The slow death of the death penalty

The Economist

So far this year 19 prisoners have been put to death in America, seven of them in Texas. Another 14 are scheduled to die. According to Amnesty International, America executes more people than any country except China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia—disreputable peers for the land of the free. But capital punishment is less common and less popular than it was, and concerns over cost, efficacy and execution methods may be hastening its demise.

Even if all the executions scheduled for this year are carried out—which is unlikely—a total of 33 would be the lowest since 1994, and would have fallen by two-thirds from the peak of 98 in 1999 (see chart). In 2013 American juries handed out just 80 death sentences: a slight increase from the previous year, but still close to the lowest level in 40 years. As of October 1st 2013, 3,088 Americans were on death row—down from a peak in 2000 of 3,593.

Several factors have driven death sentences and executions down. The simplest may be that America’s homicide rate has declined sharply—from 10.2 per 100,000 people in 1980 to 4.7 in 2012.

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