JEFFERSON CITY, MO. ? Just a few years ago, Missouri trailed only Texas and Virginia in the number of convicted killers put to death. Today, Missouri’s death row is gradually being emptied by the courts.

Since the balance on the Missouri Supreme Court tipped toward the Democrats two years ago, the court has overturned an increasing number of death sentences and convictions, reduced the death row population from 67 to 50 and brought the scheduling of executions to a standstill.

The state that once put someone to death about every other month has not held an execution in more than a year.

Death penalty foes are rejoicing. Prosecutors are fuming.

“There clearly has been a philosophical shift in a majority of the court, making it more difficult to hold death penalty sentences and slowing down the ultimate process,” said Missouri Atty. Gen. Jay Nixon. “I am frustrated. But I’m more frustrated for the crime victims and their families.”

National trend

Judicial skepticism of the death penalty has grown nationally in the past few years.

U.S. juries imposed 144 death sentences last year, a 30-year low, and the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center is projecting 130 this year. This year’s 59 executions nationally are the lowest since 1996, the organization said.

Illinois Gov. George Ryan commuted the death sentences of 167 inmates in 2003, emptying death row. Arizona, which executed 22 people over an eight-year span, has not put anyone to death in four years. Louisiana, which executed 27 people over two decades, has not meted out capital punishment in 2 1/2 years.

Joseph Amrine is hugged by his niece, Ronneice Gray, 14, at his apartment in Kansas City, Mo., in this Aug. 9 photo. Amrine was freed from death row in 2003 after his case was overturned by Missouri's Democrat-dominated Supreme Court.

Around the country, “I think there is increasingly more evidence that suggests our system is not foolproof, and that human error enters into it,” said Rod Uphoff, an associate dean at the University of Missouri-Columbia law school. “As good as our system is, it doesn’t always get it right.”

Missouri’s metamorphosis stands out because it was once one of the most active death penalty states.

Between 1989, when Missouri resumed executions, and 2002, the state put to death 59 inmates — second only to Texas’ 220 and Virginia’s 80 during the same time period.

Yet Missouri carried out just two executions in 2003 and none at all this year. In the past two years, the state Supreme Court has overturned about half the death sentence cases it has heard — 15 out of 31.

Philosophical shift

The turning point came in March 2002, when the addition of Judge Richard Teitelman gave the seven-member court — once entirely composed of appointees of Republican Gov. John Ashcroft — a new majority appointed by Democrats. Since then, the Democratic appointees have redefined Missouri’s death penalty in a series of 4-3 decisions.

Over the objection of GOP appointees, they freed death row inmate Joseph Amrine, saying the evidence appeared to show he was not guilty of fatally stabbing another prisoner. They also ordered a retrial for Kenneth Baumruk, charged in a courthouse shooting rampage, because the original trial was held in the same courthouse.

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that only juries, not judges, can impose death sentences, the Missouri Supreme Court applied that retroactively and commuted nine death sentences to life in prison. Republicans on the court wanted to hold new sentencing hearings.

In the state court’s most groundbreaking decision, it declared it unconstitutional to sentence juveniles to death — despite a state law allowing it and a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court precedent upholding it in a previous Missouri case.