The state of the death penalty in 2025

Anti-death penalty activists gather near the statue of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in MacGregor Park in the heart of Houston’s Black community, January 2021.

The century-long struggle to abolish the death penalty in the U.S. has been making significant progress in the last 20 years. 

• Executions are down!
• New death sentences are down!
• Public support is down!

And 2024 was the 10th consecutive year with fewer than 30 executions. Executions have declined by 75% since peaking at 98 in 1999. There are various reasons for the drop in state-sponsored murder. Crime rates have been decreasing, and there are logistical challenges of states finding lethal injection drugs or alternative methods of killing.

Juries are reluctant to impose death sentences given the number of people found innocent and exonerated from death row. They have growing concerns about errors and botched executions: 2022 was called the “Year of the Botched Execution” as seven of the 20 execution attempts were visibly problematic or took an inordinate amount of time. That prompted some states to put executions on hold so processes and protocols could be reviewed. Plus, in counties dealing with budget issues, the costs of a trial seeking death are higher than one seeking a life sentence. (tinyurl.com/4tdbdja8)

Public support for the death penalty remains at a five-decade low (53%) and, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, more than half of adults ages 18 through 43 now oppose the death penalty. 

Of the 29 states that still have the death penalty on their books, three have governor-imposed moratoriums on executions. So 26 states could sentence a person to death while 24 have no statutes allowing executions. Virginia made history in 2021 when it became the first Southern state to abolish the death penalty.

Yet the struggle for abolition is far from over. 

A group of attorneys and activists in Texas told this reporter before Trump’s first election that they believed the U.S. Supreme Court would abolish the death penalty. They would use the legal standard of “evolving standards of decency” to interpret the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

The Columbia Undergraduate Law Review in January of 2024 concluded an article on the evolving standards of decency as it relates to capital punishment, writing “a contemporary reevaluation of capital punishment is not merely a legal exercise but a moral and ethical imperative that underscores the ongoing debate surrounding the death penalty and its place in a changing society.”

But given the character (or lack thereof) of the current Supreme Court, this hope for abolition no longer exists. The top Court has largely abandoned the critical role it has historically played in regulating and limiting use of the death penalty.

Racist roots of death penalty  

To understand the true character of executions, reviewing history is necessary. Executions in the U.S. today are direct descendants of lynchings!

The Equal Justice Initiative writes: “Racist and illegal lynchings of the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s gave way to legal lynchings or state-sponsored executions after mounting criticism that torturing and hanging Black people while white audiences cheered was tarnishing the U.S.’s image and moral authority.”

EPI continues: “By 1915, court-ordered executions outpaced lynchings for the first time. Two-thirds of people executed in the 1930s were Black, and the trend continued. African Americans’ share of the South’s population fell to just 22% by 1950, but 75% of people executed in the South were Black.” (eji.org)

In 1972, the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in the case of Furman v. Georgia, because it was applied in an arbitrary and capricious manner, and because it was being imposed in a cruel and unusual manner, particularly regarding racial biases. Over 600 sentences were commuted.

By 1976, death penalty statutes were changed somewhat, and the death penalty was approved for use in the U.S. in the case of Gregg v. Georgia.

Ten years later the case of McCleskey v. Kemp showed that defendants in Georgia were more than four times as likely to be sentenced to death if the murder victim was white than if the victim was Black. The Court did not reverse the death sentence — although it found the statistics accurate, it concluded that executions didn’t violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because racial bias in sentencing was purportedly not intentional.

Racism still influences who is sentenced to death and executed in the U.S. today. The situation in Georgia has actually gotten worse: people convicted of killing white victims are now 17 times more likely to be executed than those convicted of killing Black victims!

Facts:

• African Americans make up 41% of people on death row and 34% of those executed, but only 13% of the U.S. population is Black.
• More than eight in 10 lynchings between 1889 and 1918 and legal executions since 1976 have occurred in the South.
• 75% of executions for murder were in cases with white victims. 

(eji.org)

Trump’s enthusiasm for executions

The federal death penalty had been seldom used until the last six months of Trump’s first presidential term. Before 2020 there had been three federal executions in 60 years. Then, in just six months, Trump had 13 people put to death, more than the previous 10 administrations combined.

Trump’s energetic enthusiasm for the death penalty goes back decades to when he called for executing five teenagers of color who were falsely arrested for the rape and assault of a woman jogging in Central Park in 1998. He paid for a full-page ad in the New York Daily News calling for bringing back the death penalty. DNA evidence exonerated the Central Park Five after they had served years in prison.

President Joe Biden campaigned on the issue of ending the federal death penalty. He did not keep his promise. But during his last days in office, Biden succumbed to pressure and commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row to life without parole.

Of the 37 men whose sentences were commuted, 21 have filed a lawsuit saying they are being punished by the Trump administration, having been transferred from a prison in Indiana to a supermax prison in Florence, Colorado — the harshest federal prison in the country.

Their lawyers say that “among them are men who have psychiatric problems and have tried to kill themselves, as well as others who have medical problems requiring facilities with better accommodations. They would spend 22 to 24 hours a day locked alone in small cells built expressly for severe sensory deprivation and to minimize any human contact, including contact with prison staff. Those held there are also limited in their contact with the outside world; and they are given one hour of telephone calls each month versus five hours a month at other federal prisons.” (New York Times, April 16)

During Trump’s campaign for reelection, he promised to execute the three prisoners remaining on federal death row. Trump issued Executive Order 14164 entitled “Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety.” Per the Executive Order, the Federal Bureau of Prisons is to work with those states that allow capital punishment to ensure the states have sufficient supplies and resources to impose the death penalty. This includes transferring federal inmates with state or local death sentences to the appropriate authorities to carry out those executions.

On April 1, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi called for Luigi Mangione’s execution, “as we carry out President Trump’s agenda.” Mangione was indicted on April 17 on charges including two counts of stalking, one firearms offense and murder through use of a firearm of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Abolition progressing in spite of Trump

Despite Trump’s push for more executions, the states that have the death penalty on their books are making some strides toward abolition.

Public awareness about the reality that innocent people are sentenced to death has grown steadily in recent years. This year, several high-profile cases of innocence attracted much attention and many supporters, along with intense media coverage. 

Although the Supreme Court has long maintained the outrageous position that actual innocence is not enough on its own to obtain relief from a death sentence, the court’s refusal to intervene in several prominent cases this year was still noteworthy.

On Sept. 24, 2024, Missouri executed Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams despite a national campaign for clemency that garnered over 1.5 million supporters on social media. There was no physical evidence against Williams, and two witnesses were paid to testify against him at trial. After the governor denied clemency, Williams turned to the U.S. Supreme Court as a last resort. But the Court declined to halt his execution, despite the prosecutor’s office and victim’s family asking for his sentence to be commuted to  life in prison. Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

The Supreme Court refused to intervene in the high-profile case of Robert Roberson in Texas, who was sentenced to death for allegedly killing his two-year-old daughter Nikki under a “shaken baby syndrome” theory. The SBS theory has been largely debunked by experts. There was no crime, and Nikki died from pneumonia, an accidental fall and inappropriate medical treatment.

Justice Sotomayor urged Texas Governor Greg Abbott to issue “an executive reprieve of thirty days” to “prevent a miscarriage of justice from occurring: executing a man who has raised credible evidence of actual innocence.” Ultimately, it was a Texas legislative committee’s last-minute issuance of a subpoena that stayed Roberson’s execution, not the Supreme Court or the governor.

The Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Richard Glossip in Oklahoma, and the state is deciding whether they will retry him. Finding Glossip guilty again may be difficult, as the credibility of the state’s star witness — the actual killer who made a deal for a life sentence and for testifying against Glossip — has been undermined.

Ruben Gutierrez, on death row in Texas, is awaiting a Supreme Court decision on whether the state is constitutionally obliged to order DNA testing. He wants to sue prosecutors to force them to test evidence that will prove he did not commit a killing.

So, the struggle continues to reform and ultimately abolish the racist death penalty. Since 1973, there have been 200 exonerations, mainly in appellate courts, with the dropping of all charges. In these cases, defense attorneys have mounted vigorous investigations and uncovered intentional misconduct by prosecutors and police. This shows what it takes to overturn death penalty sentences which have taken so many innocent lives. It is a practice that cannot be reformed. Abolition is the only solution.

Gloria Rubac has been organizing against the death penalty in Texas for over 40 years.