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Page Number: 68.0

18 

GLOSSIP v. GROSS 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

safeguard”  be  “observed”  when  “a  defendant’s  life  is  at
stake.”  Gregg, 428 U. S., at 187 (joint opinion of Stewart, 
Powell,  and  Stevens,  JJ.);  Furman,  408  U. S.,  at  306 
(Stewart,  J.,  concurring)  (death  “differs  from  all  other
forms of criminal punishment, not in degree but in kind”); 
Woodson,  supra,  at  305  (plurality  opinion)  (“Death,  in  its
finality,  differs  more  from  life  imprisonment  than  a  100­
year prison term differs from one of only a year or two”). 

These  procedural  necessities  take  time  to  implement. 
And, unless we abandon the procedural requirements that
assure  fairness  and  reliability,  we  are  forced  to  confront
the problem of increasingly lengthy delays in capital cases.  
Ultimately, though these legal causes may help to explain,
they do not mitigate the harms caused by delay itself. 

A 
Consider  first  the  statistics.    In  2014,  35  individuals 
were  executed.  Those  executions  occurred,  on  average, 
nearly  18  years  after  a  court  initially  pronounced  its 
sentence  of  death.    DPIC,  Execution  List  2014,  online 
at  http: / / www.deathpenaltyinfo.org / execution - list-2014 
(showing an average delay of 17 years, 7 months).  In some 
death  penalty  States,  the  average  delay  is  longer.    In 
an oral argument last year, for example, the State admit­
ted  that  the  last  10  prisoners  executed  in  Florida  had 
spent  an  average  of  nearly  25  years  on  death  row  before
execution.  Tr. of Oral Arg. in Hall v. Florida, O. T. 2013, 
No. 12–10882, p. 46.

The length of the average delay has increased dramati­
cally  over  the  years.  In  1960,  the  average  delay  between
sentencing and execution was two years.  See Aarons, Can 
Inordinate  Delay  Between  a  Death  Sentence  and  Execu­
tion Constitute Cruel and Unusual Punishment? 29 Seton 
Hall L. Rev. 147, 181 (1998).  Ten years ago (in 2004) the 
average  delay  was  about  11  years.    See  Dept.  of  Justice,
Bureau  of  Justice  Statistics  (BJS),  T.  Snell,  Capital  Pun­