The Methodist General Conference has been against the death penalty since delegates to the 1956 conf

1

• The Methodist General Conference has been
  against the death penalty since delegates to the
  1956 conference in Minneapolis took action and
  for the first time put the church officially on
  record as opposed to the death penalty.

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• The annual number of death sentences has
  dropped dramatically from a total of 300 in 1998
  to 125 in 2004.

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• Texas, a state which ranks first in the number
  of executions since 1976 (375) and second, behind
  California, in the number of inmates now on death
  row (404).

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• Today, 38 of the 50 states allow the death
  penalty.

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• According to the Death Penalty Information
  Center in Washington, 1,045 individuals have been
  executed since 1976.

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• The largest number in a single year was in 1999
  with 98 executions.
• As of September, 41 individuals have been
  executed this year.

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• Since the first recognized execution of a
  juvenile offender in 1642, the United States has
  executed at least 366 people for crimes committed
  as juveniles.

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• Since 1990, the US has executed more juvenile
  offenders than all other countries combined.

9

• Well-meaning people of faith weigh in on both
  sides of the debates. Some argue that the death
  penalty deters crime, but death penalty opponents
  point to the 2004 FBI Uniform Crime Report which
  shows that the South, where 80 percent of the
  executions occurred, has the highest murder rate.

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• The Death Penalty Information Center reports
  that a survey of former and present presidents of
  the country's top academic criminological
  societies indicates that 84 percent of them
  rejected the notion that the death penalty acts
  as a deterrent to murder.

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• When asked in a May 2006 Gallup Poll whether
  the death penalty deters murder, 64 percent of
  those polled said it does not only 34 percent
  believe it does.

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• This is a dramatic shift from the 1980s and
  early 1990s, when the majority of Americans
  believed that the death penalty prevented murder.

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• Various polls indicate that a majority of
  Americans support the death penalty. However that
  percentage is declining, according to a recent
  Gallup Poll.

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• When given a choice between the sentencing
  options of life without parole and the death
  penalty, Gallup found that only 47 percent of
  respondents chose capital punishment, the lowest
  percentage in two decades.

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• Forty-eight percent favored life without parole
  for those convicted of murder.

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• The poll also revealed that overall support for
  the death penalty is 65 percent, down
  significantly from 80 percent in 1994.

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• Some argue the death penalty is biased against
  the poor and African Americans, and isn't
  something that Jesus would do.

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• Thirty-four percent of those executed in the
  United States since 1976 have been African
  Americans.

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• It could be that the growing percentage of
  people opposing the death penalty has been
  influenced by the significant number of death row
  inmates found innocent in recent years, thanks to
  new evidence or revelations.

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• Since 1973, more than 120 people have been
  released from death row with evidence of their
  innocence, according to 1993 staff reports from
  the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and
  Constitutional Rights and updated by the Death
  Penalty Information Center.

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In the year 2000, eight inmates were freed from
death row and exonerated.

• Another nine were exonerated from 2001 to2002
  12 in 2003 and six in 2004.

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• The Innocence Project reports that 184 people
  have been exonerated through DNA evidence since
  1989.

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• Of the 123 who have been exonerated from death
  row since 1973, 14 were freed as a result of DNA
  testing.

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• The recent Gallup survey of American public
  opinion on the death penalty found that 63
  percent of those polled believed that an innocent
  person has been executed in the past five years,
  an increase over previous results.

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