About once a week, a convicted murderer is put to death in a state penitentiary, most often in Texas, where all but one of this year's 12 executions have occurred.But around the U.S., capital punishment is under siege. Since the first of the year, individual states have acted on long-festering questions about the equity of capital punishment and made bold moves aimed at repealing the death penalty, slowing the practice or temporarily halting it because of rising costs.
The Nebraska Legislature last month came within one vote of repealing its death penalty law. The new governor of Maryland called for the outright repeal of capital punishment. Most of Georgia's 72 capital cases have been stopped because the state's public defender system has run out of money. New Jersey lawmakers are drafting a bill to repeal that state's death penalty. And last month the governor of Virginia, a state whose 96 executions since 1976 are exceeded only by those in Texas, vetoed five bills that would have expanded the use of capital punishment.
"I do not believe that further expansion of the death penalty is necessary to protect human life or provide for public safety needs," said Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine, an opponent of capital punishment.
Skepticism toward and resistance to the death penalty have been building since the late 1990s, after investigations uncovered a troubling number of wrongful convictions. That and existing moral objections to capital punishment prompted some states, led in 2000 by Illinois and then-Gov. George Ryan, to place a moratorium on executions, which have dropped from a yearly high of 98 nationwide in 1999 to 53 in 2006.
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