By Kevin Johnson
USA TODAY
The campaign to abolish the death penalty has been freshly invigorated this month in a series of actions that supporters say represents increasing evidence that America may be losing its taste for capital punishment.
As early as this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, is poised to sign a bill repealing the death penalty in that state. A separate proposal has qualified for the November ballot in California that would shut down the largest death row in the country and convert inmates’ sentences to life without parole.
Academics, too, have recently taken indirect aim: The National Research Council concluded last week that there have been no reliable studies to show that capital punishment is a deterrent to homicide.
A Gallup poll last fall found support for the death penalty had slipped to 61% nationally, the lowest level in 39 years.
Even in Texas, which has long projected the harshest face of the U.S. criminal justice system, there has been a marked shift. Last year, the state’s 13 executions marked the lowest number in 15 years. And this year, the state is scheduled to carry out 10.
Some lawmakers and legal analysts say the numbers underscore a growing wariness of wrongful convictions.
In Texas, Dallas County alone has uncovered 30 wrongful convictions since 2001, the most of any county in the country. Former Texas governor Mark White, a Democrat, said he continues to support the death penalty “only in a select number of cases,” yet he says he believes that a “national reassessment” is now warranted given the stream of recent exonerations.
Former Los Angeles County district attorney Gil Garcetti, a Democrat and a recent convert to the California anti-death-penalty campaign, said the current system has become “obscenely expensive” and forces victims to often wait years for death row appeals to run their course.
“Replacing capital punishment will give victims legal finality,” Garcetti said.
Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, said the country’s system of capital punishment is in need of change, but not elimination. He said there is “strong motivation,” though, to fix a system that can take 20 years for offenders to reach the death chamber following conviction.
“The vast majority of states (33, not counting Connecticut) still have the possibility of the death penalty,” Burns said.
“I don’t see a blowing wind that will dramatically change that,” he added.
Copyright 2012 Gannett Company, Inc.