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Page Number: 86.0

36 

GLOSSIP v. GROSS 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

43% of its death sentences).  By the early 2000’s, the death 
penalty was only actively practiced in a very small number 
of  counties:  between  2004  and  2009,  only  35  counties
imposed 5 or more death sentences, i.e., approximately one
per year.  See Appendix D, infra (such counties colored in 
red)  (citing  Ford,  The  Death  Penalty’s  Last  Stand,  The 
Atlantic, Apr. 21, 2015).  And more recent data show that 
the practice has diminished yet further: between 2010 and 
2015 (as of June 22), only 15 counties imposed five or more
death  sentences.  See  Appendix  E,  infra.  In  short,  the 
number  of  active  death  penalty  counties  is  small  and 
getting smaller.  And the overall statistics on county-level
executions  bear  this  out.  Between  1976  and  2007,  there 
were no executions in 86% of America’s counties.  Liebman 
&  Clarke  265–266,  and  n. 47;  cf.  ibid.  (counties  with  less
than 5% of the Nation’s population carried out over half of 
its executions from 1976–2007).

In sum, if we look to States, in more than 60% there is 
effectively  no  death  penalty,  in  an  additional  18%  an
execution  is  rare  and  unusual,  and  6%,  i.e.,  three  States, 
account for 80% of all executions.  If we look to population,
about  66%  of  the  Nation  lives  in  a  State  that  has  not 
carried out an execution in the last three years.  And if we 
look to counties, in 86% there is effectively no death pen- 
alty.  It  seems  fair  to  say  that  it  is  now  unusual  to  find
capital punishment in the United States, at least when we
consider the Nation as a whole.  See Furman, 408 U. S., at 
311  (1972)  (White,  J.,  concurring)  (executions  could  be  so
infrequently  carried  out  that  they  “would  cease  to  be  a
credible  deterrent  or  measurably  to  contribute  to  any 
other end of punishment in the criminal justice system . . . 
when  imposition  of  the  penalty  reaches  a  certain  degree
of  infrequency,  it  would  be  very  doubtful  that  any  exist- 
ing  general  need  for  retribution  would  be  measurably
satisfied”).

Moreover,  we  have  said  that  it  “ ‘is  not  so  much  the