NY Times -- The Supreme Court’s Death Trap
“The number of death sentences imposed last year, 72, was the lowest in 40 years. The number of executions, 35, was the lowest since 1994, less than half the modern peak of 98, reached in 1999. Seven states, the fewest in 25 years, carried out executions.”
“California has the country’s biggest death row, with more than 700 inmates. Many more of them die of natural causes — two since mid-March — than by execution. Last July, a federal district judge, Cormac J. Carney, concluding that California’s death penalty had become “dysfunctional,” “random” and devoid of “penological purpose,” declared it unconstitutional; the state is appealing.”
Washington Post - Alabama inmate free after 30 years on death row. How the case against him unraveled.
