Year-End Reports

Death Sentences and Executions Remain Near Historic Lows Amid Growing Concerns about Fairness and Innocence. President Biden and North Carolina Governor Consider Commutations of Death Rows to Remedy Systemic Problems. Four States Responsible for 76% of Executions. The num­ber of new death sen­tences in 2024 increased from 2023, with 26. The num­ber of peo­ple on death row across the United States has con­tin­ued to decline from a peak pop­u­la­tion in the year 2000. Public support…

Only Five States Conducted Executions and Seven States Imposed New Death Sentences in 2023, the Lowest Number of States in 20 Years. Florida’s Six Executions and Five New Death Sentences Responsible for 2023 Increase. For the First Time, More Americans Believe the Death Penalty Is Administered Unfairly than…

The death penal­ty in 2021 was defined by two com­pet­ing forces: the con­tin­u­ing long-term ero­sion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment across most of the coun­try, and extreme con­duct by a dwin­dling num­ber of out­lier juris­dic­tions to con­tin­ue to pur­sue death sentences…

2020 was abnor­mal in almost every way, and that was clear­ly the case when it came to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States. The inter­play of four forces shaped the U.S. death penal­ty land­scape in 2020: the nation’s long-term trend away from cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment; the worst glob­al pan­dem­ic in more than a cen­tu­ry; nation­wide protests for racial jus­tice; and the his­tor­i­cal­ly aber­rant con­duct of the fed­er­al admin­is­tra­tion. At the end of the year, more states had abol­ished the death penal­ty or gone…