The state of Texas is no longer killing Death Row inmates at a record pace. At its peak in 1999, there were 460 men and women sentenced to death. Today, there are only 260 waiting to be executed.
In 2000, the state set an all-time record when 40 Death Row inmates were executed, compared to only 10 in 2014. Only nine inmates have been executed in 2015.
“This year, there have been no new death sentences so far,” according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
This drop in death penalty executions has been supported across the country. The report attributes the difference to several key factors. One of the major reasons has been the shortage of drugs used in executions.
In 2005, The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that juvenile offenders could not face execution, lessening future sentences as well as sparing 29 offenders on Death Row.
Texas has also revamped its judicial system, giving county prosecutors “the option to pursue life without parole sentences against capital murder defendants,” the report said.
The executive director of the Texas Defender Services, a nonprofit organization of death penalty attorneys, told the Texas Tribune, before this calendar year, “This is the longest we’ve gone in a calendar year in Texas without a new death sentence,” Kathryn Kase added, “that zero is significant.”
“Life without parole allows us to go back and reverse our mistakes,” Kase said. “We can be really safe in these cases.” Between 2007 and 2014, the state’s number of life without parole sentences jumped from 37 to 96. Currently, 745 prisoners are serving life without parole sentences, nearly three times the number on Death Row.
This year, only three death penalty cases have gone to trial. All have ended with life-without-parole sentences, Kase said.
