After years of surging popularity, the death penalty finally lost some momentum this decade. Not that even the most ardent capital punishment foe expects it to disappear anytime soon.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the United States executed 590 convicted criminals during the aughts, the most of any decade since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. But that tally tells only a small part of the story. After peaking at 98 in 1999, the number of executions has declined steadily, with just 52 in 2009. The number of death sentences handed out by juries has also dropped, from 235 in 2000 to about 105 this year.
