Oklahoma ranks #3 in executions
With the landmark Supreme Court Case Gregg v. Georgia in 1976, acceptance of the use of the death penalty in the United States was reaffirmed.
Since then, 1,522 people have been executed nationwide. Texas leads the nation with 567 executions, followed by Virginia at 113 and Oklahoma at 112. Although Texas has executed over 5 times as many death row inmates, Oklahoma holds the title of highest rate of executions per capita.
The last completed execution in Oklahoma took place in January 2015. Oklahoma is the only state that boasts more than two options for execution, with inert gas inhalation, lethal injection, electrocution, and firing squad, to be used in that order. While all 112 people executed in Oklahoma were done by lethal injection, in 2015 the State Legislature added nitrogen gas inhalation as the preferred method for future executions in the state. The Governor of Oklahoma, along with the advice and consent of the Pardon and Parole Board, is granted commutation powers by the Oklahoma Constitution.
Nationally the use of capital punishment is diminishing, with more and more states each year either placing moratoriums or banning the practice altogether. As of May 2019, there remained 29 states, plus the United States Government and Military, where the death penalty remains legal. Between 1973 and October 2018, there were 165 death row exonerations, with the most in Florida. Oklahoma reported 10 exonerations over that period, also the highest rate per capita. The number of executions nationwide peaked in 1999 with 98 and has been fewer than 30 each year since 2015. The “South” accounts for more than 81% of all executions, with nearly 45% of all executions nationwide occurring just in Texas and Oklahoma.
As of October 2018, 2,721, inmates remain on death row nationally. Along with the total number of executions falling each year, the number of death sentences has dropped dramatically from 295 in 1998 to just 42 in 2018. A report from the National Research Council titled Deterrence and the Death Penalty stated that “studies claiming that the death penalty has a deterrent effect on murder rates are fundamentally flawed and should not be used when making policy decisions” (2012). According to a survey of the former and current presidents of the top academic criminological societies, 88% of experts did not believe the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder.
Capital punishment can be much more expensive than alternatives. A study for the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission in 2017 showed that capital cases, on average, cost 3.2 times more than non-capital cases. Similar studies found that California had spent $4 billion on capital cases since 1978, and Florida spends an average of $51 million more per year on capital cases above what it would cost to provide life in prison without parole. In a 2010 poll by Lake Research Partners, a 61% majority of voters would choose a punishment other than the death penalty for murder cases.