News and Developments 2010: Executions

On December 21, the Death Penalty Information Center released its latest report, “The Death Penalty in 2010: Year End Report,” on statistics and trends in capital punishment in the past year.  The report noted there was a 12% decrease in executions in 2010 compared to 2009 and a more than 50% drop compared to 1999. DPIC projected that the number of new death sentences will be 114 for 2010, near last year’s number of 112, which was the lowest number since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Death sentences declined in all four regions of the country over the past ten years, with a 50 percent decrease nationwide when the current decade is compared to the 1990s.  Only 12 states carried out executions in 2010, mostly in the South, and only seven states carried out more than one execution. Texas led the country with 17 executions, but that was a significant drop from last year.  The number of new death sentences in Texas this year was 8, a dramatic decline from 1999 when 48 people were sentenced to death.  Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 82% of the executions have been in the South. California has not had an execution in almost 5 years, and the same is true for North Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and many other states that rarely carry out the death penalty.  “Whether it’s concerns about the high costs of the death penalty at a time when budgets are being slashed, the risks of executing the innocent, unfairness, or other reasons, the nation continued to move away from the death penalty in 2010,” said Richard Dieter, DPIC’s Executive Director and the report’s author.

On Nov.19, a Davidson County judge ruled that Tennessee’s lethal injection procedure was unconstitutional, possibly delaying the execution of Stephen Michael West and others on death row. Chancellor Claudia Bonnyman, who issued the ruling, said that the state’s lethal injection procedure “allows for death by suffocation while conscious,” because it did not specify a sufficient dosage for sodium thiopental, the first of three drugs used in lethal injections. In Baze v. Rees, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that Kentucky’s lethal injection method was constitutional, although the decision did not specifically address the amount of sodium thiopental used in executions, provided it was administered properly. Federal public defender Stephen Kissinger presented two medical experts who testified that autopsies performed on executed inmates showed that concentrations of two of the drugs used in lethal injections were too low to cause their intended effect. Medical experts found that levels of sodium thiopental (the first drug used) in all three autopsies were too low to cause unconsciousness and levels of potassium chloride (the final drug used) were not enough to stop the heart.  UPDATE: Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the state's execution procedure, allowing West's execution date to be set for Nov. 30.

In other states: a federal court in Oklahoma approved the use of the anesthetic pentobarbital as the first of 3 drugs to be used in its executions.  It would be used in place of sodium thiopental, which is in short supply.  Oklahoma has an execution scheduled on Dec. 16.  Pentobarbital has been used in the euthanasia of animals.  In Texas, the Attorney General has ruled that the source of the state's lethal injection drugs should be made public.  Texas reportedly has sufficient quantities of sodium thiopental for 39 executions, but the supply has an expiration date in March 2011.  In California, the state has so far refused to divulge its source of sodium thiopental.  Arizona, which secured a supply of this drug around the same time as California, obtained the drug from overseas and carried out an execution.  Litigation in the United Kingdom is seeking to block the exportation of drugs used in executions after it was reported that U.S. states were acquiring sodium thiopental from a British company. (Various news stories.)

On October 29, a New York Times editorial raised many concerns regarding the recent execution of Native American Jeffrey Landrigan in Arizona.  The Times said “the system failed him at almost every level, most disturbingly at the Supreme Court.” Landrigan’s execution garnered national attention because a nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental forced the state to seek the drug from foreign suppliers. Despite repeated orders from a federal District Court judge, Arizona refused to divulge the source of their lethal drug supply.  The judge stayed the execution based on these concerns, but the stay was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling that said there was “no evidence in the record to suggest that the drug obtained from a foreign source is unsafe.” But, as the editorial pointed out, "There was no evidence — either way — because Arizona defied orders to provide it."  In addition to concerns about the drugs used in Landrigan’s execution, recent statements made by Landrigan’s sentencing judge questioned the appropriateness of a death sentence in this case. Judge Cheryl Hendrix, who presided over Landrigan's trial, recently told the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency that she would not have sentenced Landrigan to death if his trial attorney presented evidence of the defendant’s brain damage and other problems.  The Board's vote was 2-2, so clemency was denied. Read full editorial below.