Executions In ‘95 A 38-Year High Recent Supreme Court Ruling Expected To Increase Rate
States executed 56 men last year, more than at any time in the last 38 years, the Justice Department said Wednesday.
According to figures by the department’s Bureau of Statistics, Texas executed 19 prisoners last year, the most of any state. Missouri followed with six executions. Illinois and Virginia each executed five Death Row inmates.
The 1995 executions were the highest since 1957, when 65 inmates were put to death.
“I expect we’ll see more increases, past 56,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-capital punishment group in Washington, D.C. “There’s too many cases piling up. We’re adding numbers each year.”
Dieter said he expects executions to be accelerated by a June Supreme Court ruling that upheld new limits on appeals by prisoners to the federal courts. Also, Dieter said, many states have implemented their own limits on appeals.
Though the limits were designed to speed up the execution process, the state regulations have actually slowed the pace because inmates are challenging the laws in court. There have been 40 state executions so far in 1996, making it unlikely this year’s total will come close to 1995’s.
But the rate will increase if the new rules are upheld by the courts, said John Pemberton, chief policy counsel of the Washington Legal Foundation in Washington, D.C. An advocate of capital punishment, Pemberton said the tighter restrictions will mean fewer frivolous appeals.
Prisoners executed last year spent an average of 11 years and 2 months on Death Row, about a year longer than the 31 prisoners put to death in 1994. In comparison, the 18 prisoners executed in 1985 had been on Death Row an average of 5 years and 11 months.
At the beginning of 1996, there were 3,054 inmates on Death Row. That high number, combined with recent efforts to shorten the appeals process, has people on both sides of the capital punishment debate predicting that executions will be more frequent.
xxxx MORE EXECUTIONS State’s with the most executions and death-row inmates in 1995: State Exec. Death Row Texas 19 404 Missouri 6 92 Illinois 5 154 Virginia 5 56 Florida 3 362 Oklahoma 3 129 Alabama 2 143 Arkansas 2 38 Georgia 2 98 N. Carolina 2 139 Pennsylvania 2 196