Anti Death Penalty Information

     Recent USA state-killing rates:  Through May 26, the rate of capital punishment in the US in 2009 will have been 69% of that country's rate for 1999, which, with 98 killed, was the record-worst year since 1951. (This figure is the average of the 2 unrounded percentages below, and is shown graphically.)
     US Bureau of Justice Statistics
     Through May 26, there will have been 29 "executions" in the US in 2009. This represents a rate of 73 per year, 74% of the 98 killed in this country in 1999.
     Considering that, in recent years, US state killings have been chronically weighted early in the calendar year, another way of figuring the current rate is that through May 26, 1999, there had been 46 state murders in the US that year; so 29/46 times 98 equals 62 projected for 2009 (63% of 1999).
     There were 85 executions in the US in 2000 (13% less than 1999), 66 in 2001 (33% less than 1999), 71 in 2002 (28% less than 1999), 65 in 2003 (34% less than 1999), 59 in 2004 (40% less than 1999), 60 in 2005 (39% less than 1999), 53 in 2006 (46% less than 1999), 42 in 2007 (43% of 1999), and 37 in 2008 (38% of 1999).
     During the 1990s, while the US execution rate multiplied, the amount that the murder rates of the US states with the death penalty, were higher than the rates of the US states without the death penalty, grew markedly as well; and, while the murder rates of the death penalty states declined markedly during that period, the murder rates of the abolitionist states declined considerably more -- with no pattern, in the changes in the murder rates, apparent, when the states are listed in the order of the ratios of the numbers of executions they have had, to their populations. US Murder Rates Relative to the Death Penalty

          International statistics:

     Mexico has effectively abolished the death penalty since 1937.
     The last country in western Europe to carry out the death penalty was France (in 1977). Abolition of the death penalty is required for membership in the European Union (15 countries), and effective abolition is required by the Council of Europe (43 countries). 70% of the countries in the world have now effectively abolished the death penalty (Canada's murder rate has dropped over 40% since its abolition there, in 1976).

     Why do we protest the death penalty?  We could cite basic facts, such as, that there is no evidence that the death penalty lowers the murder rate more than the threat of life without parole; or that, in a modern democracy, the litigation involved in a fully-appealed capital case usually costs much more than would imprisonment for life. But the tie that binds death penalty protesters together is, basically, an idea of morality: that we regard the intentional killing of helpless people as intrinsically wrong.