The Death Penalty in 2006: Year End Report

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• Executions dropped to their lowest number in 10 years. The 53 executions this year were 12% less than last year and over 45% less than in 1999.
• The annual number of death sentences has dropped almost 60% since 1999. Projections based on six months of 2006 indicate that the number will be even lower this year. In Texas, death sentences have dropped 65% in the past ten years.

• The size of death row decreased in 2006, continuing an annual decline that began in 2000 after 25 years of steady increases.
• Americans now favor life without parole over capital punishment for the first time in 20 years according to Gallup Poll Results.

• The American Bar Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill have endorsed resolutions calling for an exemption from the death penalty for the severely mentally ill.
• New Voices: Donald Heller, author of California's death penalty statute, stated, "[California's death penalty statute] was written to provide a fair method. In practice, it has not worked out that way... There are too many variables the law can't control."
• New Voices: Jack Fuller, former editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, wrote: "[The reason to abolish the death penalty] is that no government is good enough to entrust with the absolute power that capital punishment entails."

Read the entire report. / See additional graphs and links related to the report.

Read DPIC's Press Release.