As a result, last year the count of executions stopped at 42, the lowest number of executed prisoners since 1994.
But even without the worries of perverted justice or the Supreme Court's intervention, executions in the US have been on the wane.
After attaining a peak of 98 in 1999, they dropped to 71 in 2003 and then 53 in 2006.
Meanwhile the worries about faulty convictions seem to have affected jurors, who are now more hesitant to apply the death penalty and often opt for life in prison.
The number of death sentences being meted out, after peaking at 317 in 1996, fell to 276 in 2000 and 110 last year.
Even in Texas, which has executed more than 400 people over 25 years, judges have been handing up fewer than 15 death sentences a year since 2003, while in the past the number often surpassed 30 or 40.
However, public opinion polls are consistent and show the same picture: two-thirds of Americans continue to favor capital punishment, and more than 3,200 inmates remain on death row in the US.
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