News and Developments 2007: Executions

The Death Penalty Information Center has released its 13th annual Year End Report, noting that executions have dropped to a 13-year low as a de facto moratorium took hold in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s examination of lethal injection procedures. Death sentences have also dropped considerably in recent years.  DPIC projected 110 new death sentences in 2007 - the lowest number since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, and a 60% drop since 1999.

A recent Newsweek article by Evan Thomas and Martha Brant compares the historical search for humane methods of execution with the current decline in the use of the death penalty in the U.S.:

The new reluctance to punish by killing is part of a historical trend. There was a time when death and torture were spectator sports, when crowds flocked to see prisoners drawn and quartered or beheaded. In some parts of the world, flogging and stoning are still public spectacles. But in the 19th century, supposedly "enlightened" states began looking for more-humane ways to serve final justice—to kill people without causing too much suffering to either the victims or their executioners. The authorities tried hanging, firing squads, electrocutions, gas chambers and, more recently, lethal injection. Each method was supposed to be an improvement over the last.

Superior Court Judge Lynn O'Malley Taylor held that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation failed to follow proper procedure for instituting new regulations when it issued new lethal injection protocols in May. Under state law, an agency that adopts new regulations must first publish the text, invite public comments, hold a hearing if a member of the public requests one, and submit the final draft to the Office of Administrative Law, which decides whether the proposed rule was legally authorized. Though the Corrections Department maintains that the protocols are not regulations because they apply to a small number of inmates, Taylor disagreed, stating "The undisputed evidence establishes that (the execution protocol) is a rule or regulation of general application." Taylor, a retired judge sitting by special assignment in the court, also said the protocol "implements a statewide policy on lethal injections for condemned inmates," prescribes duties for state officials outside San Quentin and applies to prisoners at other institutions.