Governors soften on death penalty

RALEIGH, N.C.

In a previous stint as North Carolina's attorney general, Mike Easley helped reserve Robert Bacon, Jr. a seat on death row at Raleigh's Central Prison.

Earlier this month, Mr. Easley came face to face with Mr. Bacon again. But this time, Easley - now governor - saw the case in a new light: Two days before Bacon faced the ultimate sanction, Governor Easley commuted the sentence to "life without parole."

Easley gave no explanation for his leniency, but he's widely believed to have acknowledged a racial disparity in the case. According to capital-punishment statistics, Easley's uncertainty about the fairness of the conviction is in fact part and parcel of an uptick in the number of death- row commutations granted by US governors and parole boards.

Indeed, the trend may be emblematic of a stirring debate from the Carolinas to California - not about the morality of the death penalty, but how fairly and accurately it's applied.

As it is, the number of commuted sentences has gone from an average of one per year since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 to an average of three per year since 1999. (The one-a-year average in the 1980s is high, skewed by anti-death penalty governors like New Mexico's Tony Anaya, who once commuted five people at once.) By contrast, the recent decisions come from a broad swath of social conservatives such as Oklahoma Gov. George Keating and pro-death penalty Democrats like Easley.

"[Commuting a death sentence] is no longer a political death knell for a governor who worries he'll be depicted as being soft on crime," says Rick Halperin, head of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

To be sure, a reprieve from death row is still considered a long shot for most of the 3,716 death-row inmates. But at the same time, the recent uptick in commutations is one of a number of trends indicating that Americans - from the public to elected officials - are looking more carefully at the ultimate sanction.

While a majority of Americans still support the death penalty, that number has slipped from 77 percent five years ago to 63 percent, according to polls.

What's more, the number of executions across the country is down for two years in a row - a first since they were reinstated. Also down for the first time: the number of people sentenced to death by juries.

In addition, while only Gov. George Ryan of Illinois has temporarily halted executions - after six out of 13 death row inmates in his state were freed because of problems with their cases or because they were innocent - the moratorium has affected how many Americans view the whole capital punishment machine.

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