Year-End Reports

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…

Capital pun­ish­ment con­tin­ued to with­er across the United States in 2019, dis­ap­pear­ing com­plete­ly in some regions and sig­nif­i­cant­ly erod­ing in oth­ers. New Hampshire became the 21^st state to abol­ish the death penal­ty and California became the fourth state with a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. With those actions, half of all U.S. states have abol­ished the death penal­ty or now pro­hib­it exe­cu­tions, and no state in New England autho­rizes cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment at all.

FOR IMMEDIATE…

FOR IMMEDIATE…

(Washington, D.C.) Death sen­tences, exe­cu­tions, and pub­lic sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment all con­tin­ued his­toric declines in 2016. American juries imposed the fewest death sen­tences in the mod­ern era of U.S. cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, since the Supreme Court declared exist­ing death penal­ty statutes uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in 1972. The expect­ed 30 new death sen­tences in 2016 rep­re­sent a 39 per­cent decline from last year’s already 40-year low of 49. The 20 exe­cu­tions this year…