US Executions Have Hit a 20-Year Low

The number of executions and the number of death penalty convictions in the US hit 20- and 40-year lows respectively this year, according to the Dea​th Penalty Information Center.

Only seven states were responsible for the 35 executions performed in 2014, a drop from nine states performing 39 executions last year. This trend continues a decline that dates back to 1999, when 98 people were executed.

Rising co​sts, legal challenges, and questions about capital punishment's ratio of risk to benefit have contributed to the decline, as well as a European-Union-induced scarcity of lethal injection drugs.

Indiana, Pennsylvania and Nebraska have all admitted that they can't find the necessary drugs for executions, effectively halting the practice. The drug shortage has forced Kentucky, Montana, Louisiana, and Nevada to change their lethal injection protocols, causing execution delays while the new policies are reviewed.

Part of the reason that states are being so cautious is because of high-profile botched executions in Arizona, Ohio, and Oklahoma, states that had recently started using new lethal injection drugs. Those incidents forced those states to stop executions, at least for the rest of the year.

Even states that did perform executions in 2014 did so under legal scrutiny over the type and source of lethal chemicals being used. With major drug manufacturers refusing to sell to state departments of corrections, lawyers for inmates have been demanding that states reveal where the drugs are actually coming from, leading to First Amendment challenges and legal battles over "black hood laws." Missouri, which executed 10 people this year, was caught sending someone across state lines to purchase lethal injection drugs with cash. Just last week a judge told Texas, which also executed 10 people this year, that the ​state had to reveal the source of its execution drugs. The decision is being appealed, and may make its way to the Texas Supreme Court.

In the last decade, 10 states have dropped the death penalty. At least four more states seem primed to do the same. The governors of Colorado, Washington, and Oregon have halted the practice in their respective states, calling for debate and reevaluation. A federal judge called California's death penalty unconstitutional, halting executions in that state.

The New Hampshire state senate tied 12-12 on whether to drop the death penalty, and the issue was tabled. As the state has only one inmate on death row, and no means to execute him, it's hard to say if New Hampshire is going to ban the death penalty or if it, effectively, already had.

The US Supreme Court did its best to avoid weighing into the death penalty's legal morass, apart from ruling that an IQ test alone was insufficient for determining whether an inmate had intellectual disabilities, the presence of which, according to a 2002 Supreme Court decision, would preclude the possibility of execution.

But according to the Death Penalty Information Center's year end report, the number of death sentences has dropped from 315 in 1996 to 79 last year, a decline of 77 percent. Oddly, the highest number of death sentences came from California, a state that, again, doesn't have the death penalty at the moment.

Richard Dieter, director of the DPIC, said that, "the US will likely continue with some executions in the years ahead, but the rationale for such sporadic use is far from clear."

This perceived lack of rationale for "sporadic use," was what stalled the death penalty in California. If support for the death penalty continues to wane, and eventually becomes the minority opinion among Americans, the will to find that rationale may wane as well, and it may not take a Supreme Court decision to end the death penalty in America.