2010 - 12% decline in executions

46 men and women were executed in the United States in 2010, a 12 percent fall in executions compared to the previous year which saw 52 death sentences carried out in the country. Texas alone carried out 17 of this year's executions, but that was down from 24 executions in 2009.

The Death Penalty Information Centre's executive director Richard Dieter commented that the nation "continued to move away from the death penalty in 2010". He noted that there are concerns about the high cost of the death penalty, the risk of executing innocent people and unfairness in application which may be contributing to the changing attitudes on the practice.

A recent nationwide survey of 1500 registered voters carried out by DPIC found that most voters prefer the prospect of life without parole for murderers as opposed to a death sentence.

So is the United States prepared to get rid of the death penalty? Dieter said: "About 60 percent of the public is ready. They may still support the death penalty, but they are willing to replace it because of the problems that exist with capital punishment."


He also said that capital punishment was ranked lowest by voters among budget priorities, and that a majority of those polled favoured replacing the death penalty with life without parole if the money saved were used to fund crime-prevention programs.

A death penalty case costs $3 million, three time more than imposing a life sentence which costs $1 million. I can think of quite a few areas that money could be better spent than in killing a person.

If you would like to read more about this, you can see the entire poll results from DPIC at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/