The death penalty is on the decline in America.
The death penalty is, slowly but surely, on the decline in America.
A new report from the Death Penalty Information Center found that 2018 was the fourth year in a row in which executions were below 30 and death sentences were below 50. It’s not a new record low for a year — 2016 in particular was even lower — but it’s close.
“Death sentences have declined by half in the last four years compared to the previous four years,” the report noted. “Those years also produced the fewest new death sentences of any four-year period in the modern history of U. S. capital punishment.”
For the first time in more than a quarter century, the report went on, “the number of prisoners facing active death sentences in the United States fell below 2,500 in 2018.” It also noted, “For the first time in the modern history of the U.
