States executing fewer inmates each year as result of SCOTUS rulings, limited access to lethal injections drugs

The Atlantic's Matt Ford observes that the number of executions in the U.S. each year has steadily decreased over the last decade and half or so. Even Texas -- with its perceived affinity for executions -- is killing convicts less and less. While it executed 40 people in 2000, this year it'll execute only 10. Ford explains:

Since executions peaked nationally in the late 1990s, multiple Supreme Court rulings have limited the death penalty's scope and application. The justices barred executions of the mentally disabled in Atkins v. Virginia in 2002, for example, and eliminated the death penalty for individual crimes other than first-degree murder in their 2008 decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana... This resulted in fewer cases with which the death penalty could be applied, while also imposing new legal hurdles before it could be carried out.

 

But for Texas, the greatest shift came in 2005. First, the Supreme Court ruled in Roper v. Simmons that executing defendants who were minors when they committed the crime violated the Eighth Amendment...At the same time, legislators gave Texas juries the option to sentence murder defendants to life without parole...

Nowadays states also have less access to lethal injection drugs. Foreign drug manufactures withdrew their drugs from the market, and there are few local suppliers to replace them.

A few related posts:

• SCOTUS stays Missouri execution pending resolution of ineffective counsel allegations
• Oklahoma's botched execution amounted to "medical experimentation" and torture, says inmate's family
• NYTimes editorial board continues its call to end death penalty
• Another botched execution adds to death penalty debate
• Fifth Circuit stays execution of Texas inmate alleged to be 'intellectually disabled'

[h/t Doug Berman]