USA: 30 years of executions, 30 years of wrongs

There are signs that the USA is slowly turning against the death penalty. The 53 executions in 2006 was the lowest annual total for a decade. The number of people sentenced to death in 2006 was the lowest since 1977. An erosion of the public’s belief in the deterrence value of the death penalty, an increased awareness of the frequency of wrongful convictions in capital cases, and a greater confidence that public safety can be guaranteed by life prison terms have all contributed to the waning of enthusiasm for capital punishment.

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