Last week, an article that I wrote was published in the Savannah Morning News. In the piece, I described Georgia’s dwindling use of their capital punishment program. This sounds counter-intuitive given that Georgia executed a near record number of individuals in 2015, but, I wrote,
If you want a sense of the future of the state’s death penalty, then consider how many death sentences that Georgia juries imposed in 2015: zero. This record low shows that, despite last year’s executions, capital punishment is losing its hold in Georgia and for good reason.
Why are Georgia death sentences plummeting? It is difficult to pinpoint the reasons, but clearly, capital punishment is too perilous considering its many failures and risks. This certainly weighs heavily on judges, prosecutors, and juries.