DPIC 2020 Year End Report: Death Penalty Hits Historic Lows Despite Federal Execution Spree

Death sen­tences reached their low­est lev­el in the mod­ern era and exe­cu­tions hit a gen­er­a­tional low despite an his­tor­i­cal­ly anom­alous fed­er­al exe­cu­tion spree, accord­ing to the 2020 Year End Report from the Death Penalty Information Center. As the nation grap­pled with a dead­ly pan­dem­ic and expe­ri­enced a reawak­en­ing on racial jus­tice, most states put tri­als and exe­cu­tions on hold. At the same time, ignor­ing pub­lic health warn­ings and buck­ing nation­al trends, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment car­ried out ten exe­cu­tions in the space of five months, more fed­er­al civil­ian exe­cu­tions than in any cal­en­dar year dat­ing back to the 1800s. For the first time in U.S. his­to­ry, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment exe­cut­ed more peo­ple than all the states combined.

With Colorado’s repeal of its cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statute in March, 22 states have now abol­ished the death penal­ty. Louisiana and Utah both reached 10 years with no exe­cu­tions, bring­ing the num­ber of states that have end­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment or have had no exe­cu­tions in at least a decade to 34. Popular sup­port for the death penal­ty has con­tin­ued to wane, match­ing the half-cen­tu­ry low of 55% set in 2017. Opposition reached the high­est lev­el since 1966, at 43%. Local vot­ers across the coun­try assured future reduced use of the death penal­ty, elect­ing reform pros­e­cu­tors in major death-penal­ty juris­dic­tions includ­ing Los Angeles County, CA; Orange-Osceola Counties (Orlando), FL; Franklin County (Columbus), OH; and Orleans Parish (New Orleans), LA. More than 12% of the nation’s death-row pris­on­ers come from coun­ties that elect­ed reform pros­e­cu­tors this year.

The fed­er­al government’s aber­ra­tional use of the death penal­ty marked it as an out­lier amidst the nation­al trend away from the prac­tice. The year’s ten fed­er­al exe­cu­tions includ­ed the first Native American ever exe­cut­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for a mur­der of a mem­ber of his own tribe on trib­al lands; the first fed­er­al exe­cu­tions of teenaged offend­ers in 68 years; the first fed­er­al exe­cu­tion in 57 years for a crime com­mit­ted in a state that had abol­ished the death penal­ty; the first lame-duck exe­cu­tions in more than a cen­tu­ry; and exe­cu­tions car­ried out against the wish­es of vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers, tri­al or appel­late pros­e­cu­tors in the cas­es, and at least one of the judges who presided at tri­al. The exe­cu­tions sparked out­breaks of COVID-19 by bring­ing dozens of exe­cu­tion staff, secu­ri­ty per­son­nel, attor­neys, media, and oth­er par­tic­i­pants into close con­tact. ​“What was hap­pen­ing in the rest of the coun­try showed that the administration’s poli­cies were not just out of step with the his­tor­i­cal prac­tices of pre­vi­ous pres­i­dents, they were also com­plete­ly out of step with today’s state prac­tices,” said Robert Dunham, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

Every pris­on­er exe­cut­ed in 2020 either had a sig­nif­i­cant men­tal impair­ment (seri­ous men­tal ill­ness, brain dam­age or IQ in the intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled range, or chron­ic trau­ma) or was a teenag­er at the time of the crime. The year’s exe­cu­tions also high­light­ed numer­ous sys­temic prob­lems in the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty, includ­ing racial bias, the vio­la­tion of Native American trib­al sov­er­eign­ty, dis­re­gard­ing the wish­es of vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers, inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and inad­e­quate appellate review. 

Six* peo­ple were exon­er­at­ed from death row, bring­ing the total num­ber of exon­er­a­tions since 1973 to 172. The exon­er­a­tion cas­es this year fea­tured many hall­marks of wrong­ful con­vic­tions: pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, junk sci­ence, racial bias, and eyewitness misidentification. 

As of December 15, only sev­en states – Alabama, California, Florida, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Texas – had imposed death sen­tences this year, with one penal­ty-phase tri­al under way in Pennsylvania. Only three states – California, Florida, and Texas – imposed more than one new death sen­tence. The fif­teen coun­ties that have imposed death sen­tences rep­re­sent less than half a per­cent of all U.S. counties.