ROBIN LOVITT used scissors to stab Clayton Dicks to death when the pool hall attendant blundered onto the scene of an after-hours till robbery. Daryl Mack strangled Betty May in her home in Reno.

Neither case would merit much attention in a country that has more than 16,000 violent deaths a year. But one of these two is likely to become the thousandth convicted killer executed since the US reintroduced the death penalty in 1976. The US is fourth in the world league for executions, behind China, Iran and Vietnam, although last year’s tally of 120 men and five women sentenced to death is the lowest yet.

The murder rate was also the lowest for 40 years. Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, said that this was because “we have been giving this problem the right medicine”.

But public support for the death penalty has slipped from 80 per cent in 1994 to 64 per cent, according to Gallup, and 2005 is likely to be the fourth year in a row that the number of executions has fallen.

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre, said: “Juries are more hesitant to give the death penalty . . . in 1995 there were 327 people sentenced to death and last year there were 125, a 60 per cent difference.”

The reluctance of juries may have something to do with the fact that 122 people have been released from death row after new evidence or a retrial. Mr Dieter believes that another significant factor was the option of a sentence of life without parole. He said: “Juries prefer that option if there is a lingering doubt about the crime.”

Even in Texas, where 352 prisoners have been put to death, the pace has slowed markedly, with 20 executions likely this year compared with a high of 40 in 2000.

It may decline further when the state becomes one of the last to adopt the sentence of life without parole in September.

But the pro-death penalty lobby remains vocal. Steven Stewart, prosecuting attorney in Clark County, Indiana, argues that life without parole could be a get-out-of-jail card once states start picking up the bill for caring for geriatric murderers.

He also said that life without parole did not eliminate the risk that the prisoner would murder a guard, a visitor or another inmate and “we should not be compelled to take that risk. It is also not unheard of for inmates to escape”.

He added that those sentenced to life imprisonment served, on average, less than eight years in prison and “it is a good bet that life without parole will not have the meaning intended as years go by”.

Pressure against executions has also increased from some churches. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a strong statement this week calling for them to end.

Almost all US executions are by lethal injection after the phasing out of the firing squad, gas chamber and electric chair, unless specifically requested.

Lovitt’s lethal injection is scheduled for November 30 in Virginia and Daryl Mack’s the next day in Nevada.

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