Deborah Denno comments to USA Today on how the number of state executions continued to decline in 2011, according to a 2011 report and for the first time in 35 years, the number of new death sentences meted out fell to below 100.
Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno notes that while the nation is experiencing a decline in the use of the death penalty, several states regularly rely on it. Pointing to Texas as an example, she said, “We do have these attitudes that reflect regional differences.”
Denno cites two factors in the trend away from capital punishment: that information about innocent convicts and the high costs of capital cases is more readily circulated in the Internet age, and that the Supreme Court, which repeatedly upholds capital punishment, has chipped away at when it can be used. Since the justices reinstated capital punishment in 1976 after a four-year freeze based on constitutional problems, they have, for example, put capital punishment off-limits in cases when the defendant was a juvenile or mentally disabled.
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