What's behind decline in death sentences

Texas, with 446 inmates on its death row, is the exception - and a big one - to the national trend. The state continues to put an average of 34 people on death row each year, and many experts point to the fact that Texas juries do not have the range of options that exist other states. Here, the choice is between life with parole and death.

"When juries in Texas consider what is an appropriate sentence, life with parole has got risks associated with it," says Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes the punishment. "But polls show that the public wants alternatives to the death penalty."

A recent state poll, for instance, shows that 78 percent of respondents are in favor of changing the law to allow life in prison without parole. It has failed in past legislative sessions, but will be offered again in the upcoming session. Yet 3 in 4 Texans also still support the death penalty - even though 70 percent believe that the state has executed an innocent person.

Such poll numbers are lower nationally, but the inconsistencies between these two ideas remain, says Franklin Zimring, a law professor and director of the criminal-justice research program at University of California at Berkeley. "The United States is the world capital of ambivalence on this issue. We don't want to see innocent people executed, but we don't like murderers."

Still, some insist the two seemingly incompatible ideas can be reconciled, and that the societal benefits of capital punishment outweigh its risks.

"If you have the same system for the next 100 years, the odds are that an innocent person will be executed," says Joshua Marquis, the district attorney in Astoria, Ore., and a death-penalty supporter. "But is that going to change my opinion that the death penalty is necessary? No."

Mr. Marquis says part of the decline in death sentences has to do with medical advances in the past 30 years. Victims of gunshot wounds, for instance, are being saved at higher rates - making irrelevant the need for capital charges.

Also, he says, crime rates have decreased while pressure to not seek the death penalty has risen because of the high costs associated with it.

But perhaps most important, he says, prosecutors have become more discriminating in the kinds of capital cases they present to juries. A murder case may be eligible for the death penalty, for instance, but that doesn't mean it should be charged that way: Mitigating factors, such as the defendant's history and mental health, should be taken into account along with the circumstances of the crime.

"I don't think [the decline in death sentences] signals a massive sea change in the public's perception of the death penalty," says Marquis, a board member of the National District Attorneys Association, "but rather a recognition by prosecutors and ultimately by juries that the punishment should be reserved for the worst of the worst."

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