An in-depth analysis published by The Marshall Project, in partnership with The Guardian, finds that 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Gregg v. Georgia, the American death penalty has failed to deliver on the measures its architects outlined. Drawing on data gathered by University of North Carolina professor Frank Baumgartner and the Death Penalty Information Center, the study examined more than 9,000 death sentences imposed since states redrafted their capital punishment laws in the wake of Furman v. Georgia (1972). The analysis documents persistent racial disparities, geographic arbitrariness, lengthy delays, and low rates of execution. “Our system is an epic fail,” Professor Baumgartner told The Marshall Project. “Every flaw [the Supreme Court] sought to rectify has been a failure, and now there are new problems that didn’t used to exist.”
The analysis’ central finding is clear: fewer than one out of every five people sentenced to death has been executed. Of the more than 9,000 death sentences imposed between 1972 and 2025, 1,654 ended in execution, while more than 3,700 sentences were overturned by the courts. About 2,000 people remain on death rows, and more than a quarter of them having been under sentences of death for more than 30 years. More than 800 death-sentenced prisoners have died of natural causes or suicide. More than 400 death-sentenced prisoners have been granted relief from executives via clemency, and there have been about 200 exonerations.
“It’s such an inefficient system, as you’re wasting huge amounts of money on capital trials that end up in reversals 20 years later.”
The procedural and legal reforms introduced in Gregg—including sentencing guidance for jurors and automatic appeals — failed to eliminate the arbitrariness the Court had earlier condemned in Furman, according to the analysis. Racial disparities continue: Black people remain overrepresented on death rows. Geographic arbitrariness persists as well. Whether a defendant receives a death sentence still largely depends on the county where the crime occurred rather than on the nature of the crime itself.
To learn more about Costs and the Death Penalty, visit DPI’s What to Know Series.
More than a third of all death sentences in the last 50 years have been thrown out because of constitutional errors on appeal, largely due to the work of a network of skilled capital defenders that emerged in the years following Gregg. Defense lawyers uncovered widespread trial-level failures, from prosecutors who made racially discriminatory statements and illegally excluded Black jurors to defense counsel falling asleep during trial. Capital trials regularly reach into the millions of dollars when accounting for the additional time, security, and costs of attorneys, investigators, and expert witnesses. Public support for the death penalty has declined to just above 50%, down from a peak of 80% support in the 1990s. Pharmaceutical companies since the 2010s have refused to supply drugs for lethal injection executions, and, while a minority of states have made executions a priority, most have effectively abandoned the practice, short of abolition. In 2023, for the first time, the number of executions in the US surpassed the number of new death sentences.
The Marshall Project’s analysis coincides with the release of The Last 12 Weeks, a podcast produced with Serial Productions and The New York Times examining a single capital case that has remained in limbo for 30 years.
Maurice Chammah and Jill Castellano, How The Death Penalty At 50 Is Far More Broken Than We Knew, The Marshall Project, June 22, 2026.
