Robert Dunham Comments on the Decline of Executions in the U.S.

Robert Dunham talked about the Death Penalty Information Center’s annual report.

Last December, Robert Dunham – the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center- gave a 45 minutes interview to talk about his conclusions on the 2015 annual report and the reduction of the use of the death penalty in the U.S.

The United-States executed “only” 28 people in 2015, while 35 executions were carried out in 2014. It is the lowest figure ever recorded in 16 years. Between 2014 and 2015, the number of executions has dropped 20%. Most executions are concentrated in a few number of states: only 6 states out of 31 that have the death penalty have conducted executions, they include Texas, Missouri, and Georgia.

In the 1990’s, there was a high public support for capital punishment (almost 80%) and today the polls show this number has dropped to approximately less than 40%. Besides, not only executions have decreased last year but also condemnations.

A shift in mentality

“There are ongoing problems with issues of innocence. People of America don’t want to be sentencing innocent people to death and they don’t want to take a risk of executing innocent people (…) and on top of the problems with innocence, we have persistent problems with racial discrimination in the application of the death penalty. There are ongoing problems that the public is seeing with forensic evidence, we’ve seen the DNA revolution and what the DNA evidence showed us was not only that people who were innocent had been sentenced to death but that the evidence that was used to convict them was also wrong”.

Furthermore, Dunham adds that the trend has also been affected by a shortage of the products used in lethal injections. The reason is that several pharmaceutical companies, mostly Europeans, refused to supply the United-States with deadly substances. He advocates that they do not want to be associated with “taking lives” rather than “saving lives”.

In addition, many states had to suspend planned executions after the country experienced “failed” executions that shocked public opinion since January 2014. The execution of Joseph Wood that lasted two long hours sparked international indignation when he had to be injected 15 times before he was pronounced dead.

These figures might reflect a great change in mentalities regarding death penalty in the U.S. and perhaps is heading toward the abolition of death penalty?

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Robert Dunham Comments on the Decline of Executions in the U.S.