A study issued today by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) reports that executions are on the decline nationally.
According to the study, there were 46 executions in 2010, a 12 percent decline from 2009 and a 50 percent decline from 1999.
Executions in the South accounted for 76 percent of the national total, a decline from previous years in part due to fewer executions in Texas.
Texas was the state with the highest number of executions at 17 in 2010. Ohio was second at eight and Alabama third with five.
The number of new death sentences is also declining. “The number of death sentences in 2010 will be 114, 64 percent less than the number in 1996, when death sentences peaked at 315,” according to the report.
The report suggests that public opinion and budgetary concerns have contributed to the decline in the use of the death penalty.
Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation was quoted in the Christian Science Monitor giving voice to a different analysis, alleging that approximately half of the decline in death sentences can be attributed to a lower murder rate.
DPIC is an anti-death penalty organization. Anthony G. Amsterdam, who argued the 1972 Supreme Court case Furman v. Georgia, serves on the group’s board of directors. The case resulted in a temporary moratorium on executions. The European Commission is one of the DPIC’s sponsors.