1569 men and women have been executed in the United States since the 1970s, although executions have declined significantly over the past two decades. Most executions have been concentrated in a few states and a small number of outlier counties.
List of all defendants executed in the United States after 1976. Includes data such as sex, race, race of victims, and method of execution
Upcoming executions, stays of execution, and outcomes of death warrants
List of executions carried out in 2023. (For previous years, please see sidebar)
Outcomes of death warrants, such as stays, reprieves, and reschedules
Jul 06, 2022
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has set execution dates for 25 of the state’s 43 death-row prisoners, scheduling nearly an execution a month from August 2022 through December 2024. If carried out, the execution schedule, un…
Read MoreMental Illness
May 31, 2023
In the latest episode of Discussions with DPIC, Anne Holsinger, Managing Director of DPIC, interviews Dr. Sally Satel (pictured), a psychiatrist and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. She shares her insights on the role of s…
Executions Overview
May 01, 2023
The accompanying graph (click to view separately) displays the time in years since the last execution by each state as of May 1, 2023. Th…
Upcoming Executions
Jan 24, 2023
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) has reset the state’s execution schedule, slowing down the pace at which the 25-person execution spree it authorized in July 2022 would move forward. The order, issued January…
Executions Overview
Jan 17, 2023
Tennessee will not resume executions until it fixes systemic problems with the administration of its execution protocol, Governor Bill Lee has announced. “It’s a very important issue that has to be done correctly,…
Executions Overview
Oct 11, 2022
The South Carolina Supreme Court will hear argument one month sooner on the state’s appeal of a trial court ruling that declared two of its statutorily methods of execution — death by electric chair and firing squad — unconstituti…
Race
Sep 12, 2022
A new study of the Texas death penalty, released as the state was conducting its 400th modern-era execution in a case involving a white victim, has documented overwhelming racial disparities in the Lone Star state’s capital punish…
Executions Overview
Sep 09, 2022
A South Carolina trial court has issued an injunction preventing the state from carrying out executions using a firing squad or the electric chair, ruling that those methods violate the state’s constitutional prohibition against “…
Arbitrariness
Aug 24, 2022
In the August 2022 Discussions With DPIC podcast, former Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry and former U.S. Magistrate Judge Andy Lester (pictured), two of the co-chairs of the bipartisan Oklahoma Death Penalty…
Executions Overview
Aug 18, 2022
A decision on the constitutionality of South Carolina’s newly adopted execution methods now rests in the hands a trial court judge after lawyers for death-row prisoners and the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) prese…
Executions Overview
Aug 16, 2022
A private autopsy of Alabama death-row prisoner Joe Nathan James, Jr. suggests that unqualified corrections personnel subjected him to a torturous, hours-long execution process in a botched execution that experts …
