This year marked the tenth consecutive year during which fewer than 30 people were executed (25) and fewer than 50 people were sentenced to death (26), while high profile cases of death-sentenced people attracted significant attention and new, unexpected supporters. In most U.S. states, the death penalty is a relic of another era. According to DPI’s 2024 Year End Report, just four states (Alabama, Texas, Missouri, and Oklahoma) were responsible for more than three-quarters (76%) of executions this year.
“In 2024, we saw people with credible evidence of innocence set for execution, followed by extraordinary levels of public frustration and outrage. Several high-profile cases fueled new concerns about whether the death penalty can be used fairly and accurately. A new poll also predicts a steady decline of support in the future, showing for the first time that a majority of adults aged 18 to 43 now oppose the death penalty,” said Robin M. Maher, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI).
Executions reflect the views of jurors at the time of sentencing — increasingly, views that are 20 or 30 years out of date. The majority of individuals executed in 2024 would likely not receive death sentences if their cases were tried today. Legislative and legal changes, increased scrutiny of prosecutorial practices, and shifts in societal attitudes over recent decades have significantly affected whether defendants receive death sentences.
Today’s jurors, with their better understanding of how severe mental illness, developmental disabilities, youth, and profound trauma affect behavior, are increasingly choosing life sentences over death sentences. All but one individual executed in 2024 had at least one of the above-listed vulnerabilities. Six of the 25 people executed were 21 or younger at the time of the crime for which they were executed.
The twenty-six new death sentences in 2024 were scattered among ten states, but the only states which permit non-unanimous sentencing were responsible for 42% of them: Florida (7) and Alabama (4). Nine of these eleven death sentences were non-unanimous.
Local politicians frequently drove outcomes in death penalty cases this year. Alabama’s elected officials chose to use nitrogen gas to suffocate three prisoners despite widespread condemnation of a method many experts called torture. In Missouri, state and local politicians fought about the fate of Marcellus Williams, whose execution occurred despite the opposition of more than one million people. And in Texas and Oklahoma, there was rare public support from elected officials who helped focus attention on the failure of state laws and procedures to adequately protect prisoners with compelling evidence of innocence, like Robert Roberson and Richard Glossip. Looking ahead, the power of local politicians is likely to be determinative so long as the United State Supreme Court refuses to intervene in state death penalty cases.
The U.S. Supreme Court turned away almost all petitions (145 of 148, 98%) from death-sentenced prisoners in 2024, even those with strong evidence of innocence. This approach reflects the Court’s retreat from the critical role it has historically played in regulating and limiting use of the death penalty. The Court’s December 6 certiorari grant in Rivers v. Lumpkin, a non-capital case, threatens to further restrict pathways to relief on appeal for death-sentenced prisoners.
The Death Penalty in 2024: Year End Report, DPI, December 19, 2024. Read DPI’s press release on the report.