Word: states
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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This year's annual report of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) shows how dramatically the issue has faded in recent years. Fewer death sentences were imposed in 2009 in the U.S. than in any year since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. In the 1980s and '90s, states consistently sent more than 300 prisoners per year to death row. The total this year, according to DPIC, will be 106. This continues a steady trend going back most of the decade, and it extends even to Texas, the leading death-penalty state, where juries reliably sent 30 or more convicted...
Many factors play a part in the fading importance of capital punishment. The drop in the number of death sentences reflects a drop in the murder rate. Many states have adopted life-without-parole terms as alternative sentencing, and both prosecutors and juries have embraced the option. Also, DPIC executive director Richard Dieter theorizes that in tough economic times, states are reluctant to take on the high costs of capital cases - the special sentencing hearings, the mandatory reviews and the nearly inevitable years of appeals. The DPIC report cites the example of California, where death sentences were up this year...
...Supreme Court cleared away a group of legal challenges to lethal injection. Fifty-two inmates were put to death in 2009 - up from 37 in 2008, but far fewer than the 98 prisoners executed in 1999. As usual, Texas put more inmates to death than any other state, with 24 executions, followed by Alabama with six and Ohio with five...
...other hand, New Mexico became the 15th state to abolish the death penalty, with several other states coming close to taking that step. (Read about Maryland's decision to end the death penalty...
...right on one count. Yemen is already reeling under the converging crises of lawlessness, growing poverty, a water crisis, a looming al-Qaeda threat, a southern separatist movement, and oil reserves that are quickly running dry. Indeed, analysts cite this multiplicity of factors as presaging Yemen as a failed state. "I think the major challenge for Yemen is really economic development," Yemeni Foreign Minister Abubaker Abdullah Al-Qirbi told TIME. "It could be a failed state in some aspects, certainly, if it doesn't get the support it needs...