FRANKFORT, Ky. – Use of the death penalty is disappearing from entire sections of the United States, and eroding in others.

That's according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center. The center's Executive Director Robert Dunham says not only have executions declined by 75%, but death sentences have dropped by 85%.

He says the numbers are striking.

"There were more than 300 death sentences per year that were imposed in the United States in the mid-1990s,” says Dunham. “We are going to, this year, have the fifth straight year in which there were fewer than 50 death sentences imposed."

Earlier this year, the Kentucky Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could raise the death-penalty eligibility age in the state to 21. Since 1976, three people have been executed in Kentucky.

Dunham says public opinion, high-profile cases, and improvements in capital punishment defense and evidence have all contributed to judges and juries shifting away from death sentences.

"And as more and more states move away from the death penalty, and as juries return it less and less, we are reaching a point in which we're going to have fewer death sentences this year than in any year since the death penalty came back in the 1970s,” says Dunham.

Dunham also points out that use of the death penalty remains concentrated in the South.

"When we're looking at where executions are still taking place, it is almost exclusively in the southern states,” says Dunham.

He says 29 states, along with the U-S government and military, continue to have the death penalty as an option in criminal cases.


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Another important U.S. Supreme Court ruling this month has been overshadowed by the controversy about overturning abortion rights.

Legal experts say the court has weakened the rights of people who've been arrested in its 6-3 decision in the case Vega v. Tekoh.

At issue was a landmark 1966 decision Miranda v. Arizona, which prompted the statement police read to people as they're arrested, to inform them of their rights.

Vincent Bonventre, professor at Albany Law School, said the high court is making a distinction between Miranda protections and the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

"While an individual can sue under '1983' for a violation of his constitutional right against compelled self-incrimination, the court said that the individual cannot sue under '1983' for violation of Miranda rights, because Miranda rights aren't constitutional rights," Bonventre explained.

The '1983' to which Bonventre refers is Section 1983 of the Ku Klux Klan Act, an amendment to the 1871 law which allows people to file lawsuits if they feel their constitutional rights have been violated.

The new ruling means in such cases, a person cannot sue law enforcement officials under federal civil-rights law for Miranda warning violations.

But Bonventre pointed out New York's Court of Appeals as well as other state courts can protect Miranda rights more than the Supreme Court, and without penalty. He does not think the Vega v. Tekoh decision will be as major a change to the legal system as it seems.

"The court did not have to rule this way," Bonventre emphasized. "The court could have said, 'Well, Miranda rights are important enough, and they are part of constitutional law, even though they are not the actual constitutional right. And therefore, we want to protect them by allowing individuals to sue when their Miranda rights are violated.' "

The original 1966 case has for decades provided a safeguard for people against the right to self-incrimination through forced confessions.

A new report from The Sentencing Project debunks the myth of a post-pandemic crime wave fueled by young people.

In March, Congress held a hearing about a spike in carjackings in big cities, but the data actually show a drop in overall robberies by youths in 2020, and a drop in the share of crime committed by youths over the past 20 years.

Tshaka Barrows, co-executive director of the W. Haywood Burns Institute in Oakland, rejected calls to ditch progressive policies on juvenile justice.

"To think that somehow we don't need to revisit failed approaches that specifically have a racial impact that's structural - that dates all the way back to the founding of this country - to me, is disingenuous," he said. "It lacks a true reflection of the magnitude of what we're dealing with."

Barrows said he supports restorative-justice programs that rehabilitate young people and keep them out of the criminal-justice system. He said he views the recent recall of progressive San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin as a setback, and added that huge investments in law enforcement have not made communities safer.

Report author Richard Mendel, senior research fellow at The Sentencing Project, said he thinks young people who commit minor crimes should not be expelled or locked up - but rather, redirected to counseling.

"You take them away from school, you take them away from activities of rites of passage and adolescence, and you surround them instead with incarceration, with other troubled kids," he said, "and it's a negative dynamic that halts their natural progression to 'age out' of these behaviors."

State data show the felony juvenile arrest rate decreased from 2019 to 2020 - from 3.9 per 1,000 to 2.7 at the height of the pandemic.

A new report from Indiana University revealed stark racial disparities in bail costs, and outlined how those higher costs can have long-term impacts on folks charged with crimes and their families.

According to the report, bail across the country is set an average of 34% for Black detainees and 19% higher for Latino detainees, compared with their white counterparts.

Krystal Gibson, program analyst for the Indiana University Public Policy Institute, said increased cost makes it more difficult for many to get out of pretrial detention.

"Research does show that detaining people before their trials, it really increases their risk of future criminal behavior," Gibson reported. "It can harm the defendant, their family and community, and it disrupts an individual's life."

According to the report, eliminating cash bail could help reduce those racial disparities, since it would level the field for all ethnicities, regardless of the charges they face. Its authors point to New Jersey, which reduced its dependence on cash bail, and saw a 35% decrease in its jail population.

Come July, Indiana will enact a new law restricting the operation of charitable bail funds. Among other restrictions, the law would prevent charitable funds from bailing out people charged with a violent crime.

Gibson said the policy could potentially push detainees to rely more on for-profit bail-bond companies, which still are permitted to bail out those facing violent-crime charges.

"When you use a bail bond agency, individuals have to pay several fees, including this 10% nonrefundable fee, no matter the outcome of the case," Gibson pointed out. "And that can be thousands of dollars."

The policy currently is facing a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the Bail Project, a national bail fund whose Indiana operation is likely the largest such fund operating in the state.

The two groups argued, among other things, the policy violates the Bail Project's constitutional right to equal protection under the law, as it was drafted essentially to solely target their Indiana operations.