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 The last two executions of the year are set to be carried out next
week, with Texas scheduled to put convicted murderer Raphael Holiday
to death on Wednesday and Georgia scheduled to execute convicted
murderer Marcus Johnson on Thursday.
If those lethal injections proceed, there will have been 27
executions in the United States in 2015. That would be the least
since 1991, before "a get tough on crime" movement swept the country
and led executions to hit 98 in 1999, the highest since the U.S.
Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
The death penalty, which is the law in 31 states, has been hit by
the left and right in 2015. Court battles and a scramble to secure
execution drugs after a sales ban a few years ago imposed by makers,
mostly in Europe, have left about eight states, most notably Texas,
Florida and Missouri, as those that conduct executions. In 1999, 20
states put people to death.
Last year nationwide, there were 73 new death sentences and that
number is set to drop by at least a third this year, according to
the Death Penalty Information Center.
 Oklahoma, one of the most active death penalty states, has put a
halt on executions after mistakes in protocols that led to a flawed
execution in 2014 and the delivery of the wrong drug to the death
chamber this year.
The high costs of prosecutions and the option of life in prison
without the possibility of parole are also cited as major drivers
for the decline.
The costs of a death penalty prosecution, with appeals,
investigations and other items, can be at least double those of
housing an inmate for life and are usually far higher, according to
data cited by the Marshall Project, a nonprofit newsgroup that
focuses on U.S. criminal justice.
DROP IN DEATH SENTENCES
Texas and Virginia have instituted changes in the way death penalty
cases are taken through courts that have led to decreased
prosecutions. Texas, with 530 executions, has put to death more
inmates than any other state since the death penalty was reinstated
and Virginia has executed the highest percentage of its death row
inmates.
Those states have instituted reforms in recent years to provide more
resources for death penalty defenses and increased their access to
evidence.
"Both states have changed the way in which indigent capital defense
is provided. Counsel makes a huge difference," said Robert Dunham,
executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which
opposes capital punishment but whose data is used by both sides in
the debate.
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So far this year, Texas has had three new death penalty convictions
and is on track for its lowest number since the penalty was
reinstated. Virginia has had no new death sentences. In 1999,
Virginia had seven new sentences and Texas 48.
Due to the costs, many prosecutors have become more selective about
taking capital punishment cases to trial.
Death penalty advocate Robert Blecker, a professor at New York Law
School, said money should not be a factor.
"The death penalty should not be a utilitarian issue in terms of
weighing the costs against the benefits, but rather an issue simply
of justice, of who deserves it," he said.
Next year, voters in conservative Nebraska are set to approve or
dismiss a move by Republican lawmakers, who this year made it the
first Republican-controlled state in more than 40 years to abolish
the death penalty.
The lawmakers said the state should get out of the death penalty
process due to high costs and the unreliability of the government to
carry out the process correctly.
Another Republican-controlled state, Arkansas, tried to resume
executions this year after a 10-year hiatus but has been hit with
lawsuits that could take years to settle over its protocols and
choice of execution drugs.
"The long-term trends both for executions and for new death
sentences show the death penalty in decline. There may be from time
to time bumps both up and down but the long-term trend is clear,"
Dunham said.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by James Dalgleish)
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