With the Texas execution tonight of multiple killer Coy Westbrook, the United States has executed eight inmates in the first 70 days of 2016. If it continues at that pace (which could either slacken or accelerate), there will be 41 executions this year. That is the average annual number for the nine preceding years (although slightly more than in any of the last three). See this chart.
We often hear that the death penalty is dying, but capital punishment keeps knocking on its coffin lid. Year after year, it tells us it's plugging along. If this year continues as it has over its first roughly two and a half months, we'll wind up with an execution about every nine days, the same pace as throughout the last decade. This might not be a robust institution, but, if you go by the numbers, it's not a dying one either.
When executions continue at a more-or-less constant pace for ten years; and public support for the death penalty remains at or above 60% in each of them (and for the three decades before then); and when, last year, seven Justices declined to go along with two of their colleagues in questioning the per se constitutionality of capital punishment (Glossip) -- well, I suppose the abolitionist hype will continue, since that seems to be what they do, but hype is still just hype.
It's no big mystery why the death penalty won't go away despite the numerous stern, or sometimes more condescending, sermons from Our Betters: When you have Wendell Callahan, a career criminal and drug dealer, slicing up little girls out of sheer hate, people are going to understand that we still need a punishment that fits the crime.
Good points, but death sentences are still waaaaaaay down, which does not bode well for long term future of DP. Without many death sentences, prosecutors and victims have less personal investment in keeping the system alive.
Death sentences are down because (1) murders are down; (2) prosecutors and juries are being more selective in which murderers they sentence to death.
For years and years and years folks on the other side demanded that if we are going to have the death penalty it must be reserved for the "worst of the worst." And when we do exactly that, it is declared to be a symptom that the death penalty is dying.
You are right, Kent, that abolitionists are playing a one-way ratchet game. All I meant to suggest is that this game may be successful in large part because the fewer capital sentences means fewer people to complain if/when there is a strong push for abolition.
When the annual number of executions is pretty much (although not exactly) the same over the last ten years, and public support remains constant at over 60% right into the present day, the data suggest that the one-way ratchet game is sputtering rather than succeeding.
As much as I hate to say it--the death penalty is dying. Or, more accurately, being strangled. The fact is that the judiciary, as a whole, is openly hostile to it or generally indifferent to the thwarting of executions, and the legal culture excuses judicial excesses on behalf of capital murderers.
As long as that is the state of affairs, the death penalty is in mortal danger, notwithstamding the fact that the public agrees with it.
federalist,
If prosecutors only sought the DP in cases where (based upon clearly reliable evidence) there was absolutely no doubt about the identity of the killer and the murder(s) was(were) truly horrific (i.e., the so-called "worst-of-the-worst"), do think the judiciary, as a whole, would still be "openly hostile" to it?
First of all, this made up "worst of the worst" standard is pretty silly--yes, there are some murders which are shocking in their depravity--the Wichita Massacre for example--but this idea that somehow prosecutors should be timid about seeking death in cases where it is authorized by statute is nonsense. In other words, prosecutors aren't responsible for lawless judges thwarting valid death sentences.
But to answer your question directly--the most recent Georgia execution, I think, shows the depths to which judges are willing to stoop. Georgia tested its drugs, which showed their purity--yet five lawless judges voted to stay the execution. This shows an implacability that cannot be ascribed to prosecutors' choice to seek death.
Modern death penalty "jurisprudence" has turned into an obscene game of "Mother, may I?" That you would imply that prosecutors' aggressiveness is somehow to blame for US Supreme Court Justices lauding intemperate appellate opinions comparing an execution to a high school science experiment demonstrates trollishness on your part.