By John Moritz
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
AUSTIN, Texas - The number of states that carried out executions fell to a nine-year low in 2002, and several carried out fewer than in 2001, a study shows.
But bucking the trend was Texas, which almost doubled the number of lethal injections administered in Huntsville this year compared with 2001. It also recaptured its status as the nation's most active proponent of the death penalty.
Since resuming executions 10 years ago, Texas has administered 289 executions, far more than any other state.
"What we are finding is that the use of the death penalty is becoming more and more concentrated in Texas and a few other states in the South," said Richard Dieter, who heads the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C..
"And increasingly, Texas is finding itself standing alone in its increasing application of the death penalty," Dieter said.
13 states active this year
Executions in 2002 declined sharply in Oklahoma, which last year supplanted Texas as the nation's leader when it executed 18 inmates. This year, Oklahoma put seven inmates to death. Missouri saw a slight decline - from seven in 2001 to six this year, as did North Carolina, which went from five to three.
In all, only 13 states sent inmates to the death chamber in 2002, the fewest since 1993, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Arizona was not among them.
The federal government and six states that had carried out executions in 2001 carried out none this year. Although the total number of executions increased from 66 last year to 71 this year, the number would have declined had Texas not sharply increased its share from 17 to 33, Dieter said.
But Dudley Sharp, a spokesman for the Texas crime-victims group Justice for All, said Dieter and other death penalty opponents are mistaken if they believe the statistics indicated a lack of public support for capital punishment.
Sharp said the pace of executions slowed this year because the U.S. Supreme Court decided to take up two landmark death penalty cases: whether states could execute mentally retarded inmates and whether a judge or a jury should decide on the aggravating circumstances that might elevate murder to capital murder.
"Those two cases, in effect, placed a moratorium on executions for any case that might have fallen into one of those categories," Sharp said. "There is nothing to suggest that anything less than the overwhelming majority of American citizens support the death penalty."
Two key rulings
The high court ruled in June that executing a mentally retarded inmate violates the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The justices ruled a week later that juries must have a say in determining whether an aggravating circumstance elevates an ordinary murder case to a capital murder case.
Dieter said the two rulings and at least 13 cases in Illinois in which death row inmates were wrongly convicted underscore a growing concern over the application of the death penalty, even though polls show support for capital punishment.
Death penalty backers in Texas, including Sharp's organization and Gov. Rick Perry, point out that the state has several layers of safeguards.
Each death sentence is automatically appealed, and condemned inmates may petition the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles for relief once they have exhausted all court remedies.
Finally, the governor has the power to stay an execution for 30 days if 11th-hour evidence casts doubt on an inmate's guilt.
In his report, Dieter pointed out that in more than 100 cases since the Supreme Court lifted the ban on capital punishment in 1976, evidence has emerged to free condemned inmates.