| Death Penalty Prisoner Petitions Fall Sharply |
| (07 Jun 2019)
The latest available data from the federal courts show that during April 2019 the government reported only 5 new prisoner petitions challenging their death penalty sentence. According to the case-by-case court records analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, there were just 62 death penalty challenges for the first seven months of FY 2019.
They have fallen over fifty percent (51.6%) over the last two years. Petitions are on pace to be the lowest number filed in over a decade
Over the last dozen years death penalty petitions reached a peak during FY 2009 when they totaled 245. The previous low was five years ago in FY 2014 when they fell to 162. If the current pace of filings continues during the remaining months of FY 2019, filings are projected to be only slight above one hundred this year. The comparisons of the number of civil filings for death penalty-related suits are based on case-by-case federal court records which were compiled and analyzed by TRAC. Nearly half of death penalty petitions thus far during FY 2019 have been filed in just 6 of the 94 federal judicial districts. The Middle District of Florida tops the list with 7 cases: two filed in the Tampa area, 2 in the Orlando area, 2 in the Jacksonville court office, and the remaining case with the court in Ft. Myers. To see a full list of the districts in which death penalty prisoner petitions have been filed this year go to: https://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/civil/561/ Each month, TRAC offers a report focused on one area of civil litigation in the U.S. district courts. In addition, subscribers to the TRACFed data service can generate custom reports by district, office, nature of suit or federal jurisdiction with data updated through April 2019. To start, go to: https://trac.syr.edu/interpreter?tab=civil If you want to be sure to receive notification whenever updated data become available, sign up at: https://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1 or follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/tracreports TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the US Federal government. To help support TRAC's ongoing efforts, go to: https://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl |
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