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1 Susan Schechter-Ryan, Death-row Prisoners, 1981 1 (1981)

handle is hein.death/drprs0001 and id is 1 raw text is: U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics II Death-row Pisoners 1981 The death-row population in the United States swelled to 838 persons by yearend 1981-150 more than at yearend 1980. It was by far the largest group awaiting execution since a national count began in 1953. The cause of this huge accumula- tion of condemned prisoners was a 3 to 1 ratio of persons receiving the death penalty to those removed from death row during 1981. Among the latter was an Indiana prisoner who was executed in March 1981, the fourth person to suffer the death penalty since an unofficial 10-year moratorium on executions ended in 1977. A decade of decisions The relatively small group, 74 in all, relieved of the death sentence during 1981 reflected increasingly successful efforts of State legislatures to adapt capital punishment laws to guidelines established by the U.S. Supreme Court during the 1970's. During the previous decade, opponents of the death penalty had stepped up their use of litigation to block the execution of death-row prison- ers, actions that largely were responsible for the moratorium that began in 1967. Then, in the 1972 watershed case of Furman vs. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty had often been used in an arbitrary and capricious manner, thereby violating Eighth Amendment guarantees against cruel and unusual punishment. All of the 600 persons sentenced under pre-Furman laws and awaiting death were eventually removed from death row. But the accumu- lation began again as many States moved quickly to revise their capital punishment statutes to meet objections raised by the Court. The new laws generally were of two types. Some States sought to eliminate 1968 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 any chance of unfair treatment by making the death penalty mandatory for specified crimes, contingent solely on a finding of guilt. A second type went beyond the July 1982 The United States will witness a spate of executions beginning in 1983-84 without parallel in this Nation since the depression era. Whatever views one may hold on the use of capital punishment, that is the reality behind the numbers presented here- both those dealing with prisoners on death row and the number of State capital punishment statutes that have passed Federal or State constitutional muster. The number of persons on death row has been rising steadily for 5 years; only four persons were executed during this period, three of whom chose not to exhaust their avenues of appeal. A similar buildup on death row occurred during the sixties, but these persons were all removed from the threat of capital punishment as a result of the Supreme Court decision in Furman vs. Georgia. Now again time is running out for a large proportion of individuals awaiting capital punishment. States have drafted and redrafted capital punish- ment measures and the Supreme Court is overturning fewer and fewer on Eighth Amendment or other constitu- tional grounds. Further, many death-row residents are exhausting their appeal process under these statutes. Thus the situation is ripe for the Nation to witness executions at a rate approaching the more than three per week that prevailed during the 1930's. We will then have a grim arena in which to conduct our national debate on the efficacy of the death penalty. Benjamin H. Renshaw III Acting Director Number of persons on death row, yearend 1968-81 Number