Cover of The Book Thief
I can’t help but hear this excellent news in the voice of Death, the narrator from Marcus Zusak’s marvelous The Book Thief. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the death penalty’s “sinking popularity is resulting in fewer executions and death sentences.” Nationwide, there were just 39 executions in 2013, a 10-percent decline since 2012.
2013 was only the second year since 1994 with fewer than 40 executions in the United States. Executions were carried out in just nine states, with Texas and Florida accounting for nearly 60 percent of them.
In my own state of North Carolina, 2013 was North Carolina’s seventh year without an execution. Juries sent only a single person to death row, the first death sentence imposed since 2011. In 2012, for the first time in the modern era of the death penalty, no one was sentenced to death in North Carolina.
The appetite for execution appears to be waning dramatically. A February poll of North Carolina voters, including moderates and conservatives, found that nearly 70 percent favored replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment without parole if offenders are forced to work and pay restitution. A national Gallup poll released in November showed that public support for the death penalty has reached a 40-year low.
The United States remains in very bad company, among the few nations (China? Iran?) that still executes people. Interestingly, the Europeans are taking some credit for the decrease, since the European Commission imposed tough restrictions on the export of anaesthetics to US corrections departments in 2011. As a result, Florida has turned to midazolam hydrochloride, a drug never before used in executions, provoking an outcry that it might be inflicting cruel and unusual punishment on condemned prisoners.
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