State Death Penalty Sentences Decrease

December 9, 2005December 16, 2009 869 Views Security and Safety

ORLANDO – The number of criminals sentenced to die in Florida has dropped dramatically after peaking in the late 1980s and early 1990s, while life sentences without parole have increased.

Of the 365 inmates on Florida’s death row, 72 were convicted and sentenced in central Florida. Death sentences during the past decade have dropped by 53 percent in Florida, and by 50 percent nationally.

It could reflect the simple fact that more violent criminals are in jail rather than on the street committing crimes. More likely, some experts say, it could represent juror ambivalence about capital punishment in light of a growing number of wrongful convictions.

Since 1999, only four convicted murderers in Orange and Osceola counties have received the death penalty. One of them was the retrial and resentencing of an earlier case.

Prosecutors say stricter penalties for repeat offenders have removed many potential killers from society. They say that helps explain the statewide increase in life sentences and the drop in death sentences. And they say the death penalty continues to be reserved for killers considered the worst of the worst.

In the late 1980s, 50 people were added to the state's death row during one 12-month period. And through the mid-1990s, it wasn't unusual to see 30 or 40 convicted criminals sentenced to death in a year. But during the past two fiscal years, the number of people sentenced to death statewide fell to nine and 10 per year, respectively.

Florida's trend mirrors national statistics released in September by the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center, which reported a 50 percent drop in death sentences nationwide from the 1990s to the 2000s.

As the state's death sentences have dropped, the number of life sentences has increased from 388 in 1995-96 to 489 in 2002-03. Meanwhile, the state's murder count has dropped from more than 1,000 per year during the mid- and late-1990s to 924 last year, according to Florida Department of Law Enforcement statistics.