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The electric chair was introduced in 1922 as a humanitarian measure.

Taking a closer look at the death penalty

With many states putting moratoriums on the executions, the number of state mandated deaths has been steadily falling for the past 10 years

Kathryn Ririe WIL03058@BYUI.EDU Scroll Staff

The right to a fair trial is a basic human right. When this right is violated, innocent people may face conviction, imprisonment and even execution.

The Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics recently released its yearly report showing that death sentences and executions are down for the fourth consecutive year.

Out of the 31 executions scheduled so far this year, only 12 have taken place, according to www.deathpenaltyinfo.org.

In the past year, there were 96 new death sentences, according to the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center.

This is down 70 percent from 1996 when courts sentenced 320 people to die — the largest annual number since the modern era of capital punishment began in 1976.

This dramatic decrease of executions is partly due to the current attempts of lawmakers to put a halt to the death penalty.

In an attempt to stop the taking of innocent lives, more and more states are choosing to not enforce the death penalty.

For example, in 2003, former Illinois governor George Ryan granted clemency to all of the remaining 167 death row inmates in Illinois and appointed a commission to review the current capital punishment system because of the flawed process that led to these sentences.

“I cannot support a system, which, in its administration, has proven to be so fraught with error and has come so close to the ultimate nightmare, the state’s taking of innocent life,” Ryan said in a press release.

Since Ryan’s call for a review of the death penalty in Illinois, many governors across the nation have voiced concerns about the fairness of their states’ systems, and several states have launched comparable studies of capital punishment policies.

For example, in recent years, the New Jersey Senate passed a bill that would suspend executions, North Carolina announced a death penalty study commission and Texas instituted a new Criminal Justice Advisory Council, according to www.deathpenaltyinfo.org.

In addition, legislatures in nearly every state retaining the death penalty considered reform legislation, and an escalating number of communities and organizations are calling for a halt, or moratorium, to executions until capital punishment concerns are addressed.

The right to a fair trial is a basic human right. With new laws and reviews of old practices, lawmakers across the nation are attempting to ensure this right is respected and enforced.