This report, however, omits critical information and was designed to support the preordained conclusions of its authors. When all of the evidence is considered in its proper context, there are three important conclusions about capital punishment. First, capital punishment is reserved for heinous crimes. Second, although the courts still go to extraordinary lengths to provide due process in capital cases, errors have been reduced dramatically as the law has become more settled. Third, only the guilty are executed.
Death sentences are rare.
The vast majority of crimes, including serious crimes of child molestation, kidnapping, rape, armed robbery, drug dealing, and armed burglary of an occupied home, do not carry even a possible death sentence. A fraction of 1 percent of all criminal cases in Alabama is classified as capital murder. To warrant a death sentence, capital murder must involve other aggravating factors, such as kidnapping, rape, or robbery. When capital punishment was reformed and reinstated in the late 1970s, the courts went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the new process was fair and accurate. As a result, many death sentences, in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Bill Pryor is Alabama's attorney general.