Report says death sentences declining

WASHINGTON -- The number of people sentenced to death has fallen substantially over the last few years, as the number cleared from death row continues to climb, an advocacy group reported yesterday.

The Death Penalty Information Center says that juries have become more reluctant to sentence defendants to be executed given questions about the death penalty in recent years, including several high-profile cases in which death-row prisoners were vindicated.

The center also pointed to the moratorium on executions in Illinois imposed by George Ryan, when he was governor.

''It gives a real doubt to the public and to jurors that there may be a mistake uncovered five or 10 years from now," said Richard Dieter, the center's executive director. ''Given that knowledge, they're hesitant or less likely to impose the death penalty."

Some death penalty supporters agree that the public mood has changed, while others say juries have always taken great care in sentencing someone to death.

In any case, the number of death penalty sentences has fallen since the 1990s, when an average of 290 defendants received such sentences each year. But from 2000 to 2003, the yearly average declined to 174.

In 2003, 143 people were sentenced to die, the lowest since 1977, when the US Supreme Court allowed executions to resume in the United States.

The center's report attributed the decline to the rising number of defendants who have seen their death penalty convictions overturned. Its report counted 116 people who have been cleared from death row, including 14 who were proved innocent by later DNA testing.

Critics say that number is inflated, because it includes people who were not proved innocent but had convictions overturned for procedural reasons. The real number is probably closer to 40, said Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which supports the death penalty. An appeals court may have determined that a key piece of evidence should not have been admitted at trial, and the defendant was then found not guilty at a second trial. That doesn't make him innocent, critics say.

Scheidegger added that more attention to the death penalty may be affecting juries.

The falling number of death sentences may also be caused by a series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1990s requiring that juries be told that life in prison without parole was an alternative to death, Dieter said.

He said 47 states now offer a life-without-parole sentence as an option at least for some offenders, up from 30 states in 1993.