DPI’s 2026 Mid-Year Update: Jurors Continue to Reject Death Sentences Amidst Increased Secrecy and Disinformation

Introduction

False state­ments by gov­ern­ment offi­cials. Media wit­ness­es banned from view­ing exe­cu­tions. New laws passed to evade judi­cial review. During the first six months of 2026, the Death Penalty Information Center doc­u­ment­ed new efforts to con­ceal crit­i­cal details about the death penal­ty — even as some gov­ern­ment offi­cials sought to increase and expand its use. 

These efforts are best under­stood when the truth about the death penal­ty and exe­cu­tions is viewed as a threat to its accep­tance—an obser­va­tion first made fifty years ago this month, by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall:

The Supreme Court’s land­mark rul­ing in Gregg v. Georgia (1976) marked the begin­ning of the mod­ern death penal­ty era. It autho­rized the resump­tion of exe­cu­tions after a four-year pause and estab­lished new legal pro­tec­tions and pro­ce­dures to guide sen­tenc­ing deter­mi­na­tions. These changes, the Court said, would ensure con­sis­ten­cy and fair­ness in death penal­ty cas­es. But fifty years lat­er, the data show that nei­ther assur­ance was accurate.

DPI’s data show that when the death penal­ty is used, there is racial bias, error, and arbi­trari­ness in the out­comes. The first six months of 2026 show a con­tin­u­a­tion of these per­sis­tent themes, even as secre­cy and leg­isla­tive efforts to expand the death penal­ty have increased. But as Justice Marshall pre­dict­ed, the facts about the death penal­ty are mak­ing an impact that can clear­ly be seen in the rejec­tion of new death sen­tences by juries and declin­ing pub­lic sup­port. 

Here are the head­lines for the first six months of 2026.

12 new death sen­tences were imposed in sev­en states; few­er death sen­tences were imposed by unanimous juries.

In the first half of 2026, 12 peo­ple were sen­tenced to death, in line with last year’s sen­tenc­ing rates. Only sev­en of them were imposed by unan­i­mous juries, con­tin­u­ing a trend DPI has been close­ly track­ing. In the first six months of the year, Florida juries once again imposed the high­est num­ber of new death sen­tences (4), none of which were unan­i­mous; Florida imposed five new death sen­tences in all of 2025. Juries in Arizona and Texas each imposed two new death sen­tences. California, Missouri, Nebraska (judge imposed), and North Carolina each had one new death sentence.

Capital juries chose life sen­tences more often than death—at least 19 times this year. 

Sixteen of the life sen­tences imposed by cap­i­tal juries in the first half of 2026 came from Alabama and Florida—the only two states that allow non-unan­i­mous juries to make cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing deter­mi­na­tions. In Florida, death can be imposed with the agree­ment of just eight out of 12 jurors. In Alabama, 10 are required. Yet even with those low­ered thresh­olds — and deci­sions made by death-qual­i­fied jurors who have indi­cat­ed their will­ing­ness to impose death sen­tences — juries chose life sen­tences more often than they chose death. Though pros­e­cu­tors in Alabama sought the death penal­ty more often than pros­e­cu­tors in any oth­er state, no one was sen­tenced to death in Alabama in the first half of 2026.

New secre­cy laws hide crit­i­cal details about the death penal­ty from the public. 

Two states expand­ed their secre­cy poli­cies in 2026, join­ing oth­er states with secre­cy pro­vi­sions that pre­vent the pub­lic from under­stand­ing crit­i­cal details about how their elect­ed offi­cials are using the death penal­ty. Kentucky leg­is­la­tors over­rode a veto by Governor Andy Beshear to enact a law that allows exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols to bypass the state’s usu­al admin­is­tra­tive reg­u­la­tions. The state has not per­formed any exe­cu­tions since 2008.

Idaho, which attempt­ed to resume exe­cu­tions in 2024 but ulti­mate­ly failed to set an IV line to exe­cute Thomas Creech, passed new leg­is­la­tion to fur­ther shield its exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dures from pub­lic scruti­ny. The new law states that exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dures are not sub­ject to judi­cial review under Idaho’s Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which lays out the stan­dards gov­ern­ment agen­cies must fol­low when adopt­ing new rules to ensure pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion, trans­paren­cy of deci­­sion-mak­ing, and account­abil­i­ty for decision-makers. 

A divid­ed 7^th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Indiana’s law and depart­ment of cor­rec­tions pol­i­cy that gen­er­al­ly pro­hibits jour­nal­ists from wit­ness­ing exe­cu­tions. In her dis­sent, Judge Candace Jackson-Akiwumi argued that exe­cu­tions occu­py a unique place in con­sti­tu­tion­al law because they involve the state’s ulti­mate exer­cise of pow­er. ​“A gov­ern­ment exer­cis­es its great­est pow­er when it ends a person’s life,” she wrote. ​“As I see it, such severe and irre­versible pun­ish­ment on behalf of ​‘the peo­ple’ must be observ­able to com­ply with the Constitution.” An appeal is pending.

The U.S. death row pop­u­la­tion is the low­est since the 1980s.

In June, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) report­ed that the U.S. death row pop­u­la­tion has dropped below 2,000 peo­ple for the first time since the 1980s. The 1,993 peo­ple cur­rent­ly sen­tenced to death rep­re­sent a 47% decline from the peak of 3,726 in 2001. In a press release, LDF explained, ​“Despite gov­ern­ment efforts to expand death-eli­gi­ble offens­es, intro­duce new meth­ods of exe­cu­tion, and accel­er­ate exe­cu­tions, the Spring 2026 report shows the removal of indi­vid­u­als through resen­tenc­ing, judi­cial rever­sals, and declin­ing impo­si­tion of new death sen­tences is help­ing to shrink the death row pop­u­la­tion.” Research by University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Professor Frank Baumgartner and DPI has found that the most like­ly out­come for a death sen­tence is that it will be over­turned and the pris­on­er will be giv­en a sen­tence less than death.

Early trends sug­gests few­er exe­cu­tions than 2025; large­ly in the South and occur­ring in just 4 states.

The 16 exe­cu­tions so far in 2026, com­pared to 25 at this same time last year, took place in just four states: Arizona (1), Florida (9), Oklahoma (2), and Texas (4). Florida has now exe­cut­ed more peo­ple this year than all oth­er states com­bined, sim­i­lar to last year’s pace. While 27 states legal­ly per­mit the death penal­ty, 10 of them have not exe­cut­ed any­one in the last decade or more.

All but one of this year’s exe­cu­tions (94%) took place in south­ern states. In the last 50 years, 82% of exe­cu­tions have tak­en place in the South. 

The same four states that car­ried out exe­cu­tions so far this year were also respon­si­ble for eight of the twelve new death sen­tences (67%). Oklahoma was the only state to exe­cute some­one but not impose any new death sentences. 

Racial bias remains evi­dent in exe­cu­tions, both in the race of defen­dants and victims.

Nine of the 16 (56%) peo­ple exe­cut­ed in the first six months of 2026 were Black. This per­cent­age is high­er than the over­all per­cent­age of Black defen­dants exe­cut­ed (34%) or those cur­rent­ly on death row (40%). 

The 16 peo­ple exe­cut­ed were con­vict­ed of killing a total of 22 vic­tims. Of those vic­tims, 64% (14) were white, though white peo­ple make up only about 50% of mur­der vic­tims nation­wide. While five Black pris­on­ers were exe­cut­ed for killing only white vic­tims, no white pris­on­er was exe­cut­ed for killing any Black vic­tims. One white pris­on­er (Leroy McGill in Arizona) was exe­cut­ed for killing a Latino vic­tim. This white vic­tim pref­er­ence has been per­sis­tent through­out the his­to­ry of the death penal­ty in the U.S. Since 1976, 75% of vic­tims in cas­es that result­ed in an exe­cu­tion have been white.

Alabama’s nitro­gen gas pro­to­col was found uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, and Idaho’s pri­ma­ry exe­cu­tion method is now a firing squad. 

Alabama was the first state to use nitro­gen gas to exe­cute pris­on­ers, and in every exe­cu­tion using this pro­to­col, wit­ness­es observed signs indi­cat­ing that pris­on­ers were expe­ri­enc­ing pain and dis­tress. Jeffery Lee, a death-sen­tenced Alabama man whose judge over­rode the jury’s rec­om­men­da­tion for a life sen­tence, chal­lenged the state’s nitro­gen gas pro­to­col in May. In June, after a remand from the 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals, a fed­er­al dis­trict court judge held that the pro­to­col vio­lat­ed the 8^th Amendment’s pro­hi­bi­tion against cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment and ​“per­ma­nent­ly enjoined” the state from using it to exe­cute Mr. Lee. The state has appealed the injunc­tion but has now indi­cat­ed it will exe­cute Mr. Lee using lethal injec­tion. This is the first time a fed­er­al court has found a method of exe­cu­tion to be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al under the cur­rent Baze-Glossip legal standard.

Idaho’s new law adopt­ing the fir­ing squad as its pri­ma­ry exe­cu­tion method went into effect on July 1^st, fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of a new exe­cu­tion cham­ber that cost almost 1 mil­lion dol­lars. Executions will be car­ried out by vol­un­teer law enforcement personnel. 

A Tennessee pris­on­er with a strong claim of inno­cence and untest­ed DNA evi­dence sur­vived a botched execution.

Tony Carruthers has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his inno­cence through­out his more than 30 years on Tennessee’s death row. At his tri­al, pros­e­cu­tors relied almost entire­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of a paid jail­house infor­mant. DNA col­lect­ed from the crime scene has nev­er been com­pared to anoth­er sus­pect in the case. Ahead of his sched­uled May 21 exe­cu­tion date, more than 130,000 peo­ple signed peti­tions call­ing for clemen­cy.

Tennessee pro­ceed­ed with Mr. Carruthers’ exe­cu­tion, but after an hour of attempt­ing and fail­ing to set an IV line, the exe­cu­tion was called off and Governor Bill Lee issued a one-year reprieve. Maria DeLiberato, an attor­ney for Mr. Carruthers who wit­nessed the state’s failed attempt to exe­cute him, said, ​“Permitting Tony Carruthers’ exe­cu­tion to move for­ward with­out order­ing DNA test­ing was already a pro­found injus­tice. Today, that injus­tice became out­right bar­bar­ic after Mr. Carruthers was sub­ject to a botched exe­cu­tion attempt.” It was the 64^th botched exe­cu­tion in the mod­ern death penal­ty era. 

U.S. Supreme Court ignores death penal­ty cas­es with seri­ous innocence claims. 

Texas pris­on­er Charles Flores sought to chal­lenge the use of hyp­no­tized wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny in his case. The U.S. Supreme Court on June 15 declined to review his appeal, which argued that his con­vic­tion should be over­turned under Texas’ junk sci­ence statute, Article 11.073, which allows pris­on­ers to chal­lenge con­vic­tions that rely on outdated and/​or dis­proven sci­ence. Mr. Flores was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the 1998 rob­bery and mur­der of Elizabeth ​​“Betty” Black in her Texas home. He was con­vict­ed based on the tes­ti­mo­ny of Jill Barganier, one of Mrs. Black’s neigh­bors, who did not iden­ti­fy Mr. Flores until she was hyp­no­tized by police — 13 months after the crime occurred. Texas courts have refused to grant relief to Mr. Flores, despite the fact that no DNA or phys­i­cal evi­dence has ever tied him to the crime.

On March 23 the Court denied review to Rodney Reed, anoth­er Texas pris­on­er with a long­stand­ing inno­cence claim. Mr. Reed, who is Black, was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the 1996 stran­gu­la­tion of Stacey Stites, a young white woman. Mr. Reed has argued that Ms. Stites’ fiancé Jimmy Fennell killed her because she and Mr. Reed had a con­sen­su­al rela­tion­ship. Yet the state has long fought Mr. Reed’s request for DNA test­ing, even after the Court ruled in Mr. Reed’s favor in 2023. The Court declined review of his lat­est appeal over a dis­sent from the three lib­er­al jus­tices, who wrote that “[i]t is inex­plic­a­ble why the [DA’s office] refus­es to allow DNA test­ing of the belt that was used to kill Stites, despite the very sub­stan­tial pos­si­bil­i­ty that such test­ing could excul­pate Reed and iden­ti­fy the real killer…the State will like­ly exe­cute Reed with­out the world ever know­ing whether Reed’s or Fennell’s DNA is on the mur­der weapon, even though a sim­ple DNA test could reveal that infor­ma­tion.”  

Political rhetoric and mis­in­for­ma­tion dri­ve cur­rent use of the death penalty.

On both the fed­er­al and state lev­el, deci­sions about whether and how to use the death penal­ty are deter­mined by elect­ed offi­cials. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has been giv­en com­plete dis­cre­tion to set exe­cu­tion dates and select the pris­on­ers who will be exe­cut­ed with­out pro­vid­ing any ratio­nale. The state has dra­mat­i­cal­ly increased exe­cu­tions, set­ting a record of 19 exe­cu­tions in 2025. In the first six months of 2026, Florida has exe­cut­ed more peo­ple (9) than in any pre­vi­ous full year except 2025.

State leg­is­la­tors in Alabama and Mississippi passed bills in February and April this year mak­ing child rape a death-eli­gi­ble crime. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2008 deci­sion in Kennedy v. Louisiana con­firmed that crimes can only be death-eli­gi­ble if the vic­tim is killed. These new laws, which were passed in five oth­er states over the last three years, are intend­ed to direct­ly chal­lenge that legal prece­dent. In twelve oth­er states, sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion has been pro­posed and defeat­ed. Mississippi State Representative Jansen Owen (R – Lamar, Pearl River) told a local news out­let that this leg­is­la­tion was intro­duced at the sug­ges­tion of the White House as part of a coor­di­nat­ed nation­al effort to cre­ate cir­cum­stances for the Supreme Court to revis­it Kennedy. Mississippi’s law also intro­duces non-una­nim­i­ty, allow­ing a death sen­tence for child rape with the agree­ment of only eight jurors. Death sen­tences for homi­cide in Mississippi must be unanimous.

The Trump Administration announced new plans to expand and speed up the fed­er­al death penal­ty, tout­ing debunked deter­rence the­o­ries and claim­ing, despite con­trary evi­dence, that there is broad pub­lic sup­port for its efforts. In April, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a report call­ing on the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to rein­state use of a sin­­gle-drug (pen­to­bar­bi­tal) exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, and urg­ed Congress to enact a sweep­ing leg­isla­tive agen­da. Among the report’s pro­pos­als are the use of the fir­ing squad, elec­tro­cu­tion, and lethal gas — meth­ods it uncrit­i­cal­ly presents as con­sti­tu­tion­al, mis­rep­re­sent­ing the his­to­ry and judi­cial deci­sions sur­round­ing those methods.

In March, the DOJ also pro­posed a new set of reg­u­la­tions intend­ed to fast-track death penal­ty appeals by short­en­ing fil­ing dead­lines and cur­tail­ing fed­er­al court review. The rule as cur­rent­ly pro­posed allows the Attorney General to cer­ti­fy states that can use these fast-track pro­ceed­ings based only on the asser­tions of state offi­cials that they pro­vide com­pe­tent attor­neys to pris­on­ers for their state post-con­vic­­tion appeals — and by refus­ing to con­sid­er evi­dence that sug­gests oth­er­wise. At least six states have sub­mit­ted appli­ca­tions for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, argu­ing that their post-con­vic­­tion coun­sel sys­tems qual­i­fied as of the includ­ed dates: Alabama (2016), Florida (2015), Mississippi (2000), Ohio (1996), Tennessee (1995), and Texas (1995). These states rep­re­sent some of the most active death penal­ty states in the coun­try, all of which have trou­bling evi­dence of inad­e­quate or nonex­is­tent coun­sel on appeal. 

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has also faced seri­ous set­backs in its efforts to seek new fed­er­al death sen­tences. On January 30, a fed­er­al judge ruled that Luigi Mangione can­not face the death penal­ty in his upcom­ing tri­al for the mur­der of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Two counts from his fed­er­al indict­ment were dis­missed, one of which car­ried the death penal­ty as a poten­tial sen­tence. Federal pros­e­cu­tors had sought the death penal­ty under a fed­er­al firearms statute that allows a death sen­tence when a firearm is used in a homi­cide while a fed­er­al ​“crime of vio­lence” is also com­mit­ted. The under­ly­ing ​“crime of vio­lence” that was alleged was stalk­ing, but a U.S. District Judge found that it did not meet the definition. 

The Department of Justice also attempt­ed but failed to revive fed­er­al death pros­e­cu­tions for a num­ber of cas­es decid­ed under the Biden Administration. In each of the cas­es, fed­er­al courts denied the DOJ’s request to seek a fed­er­al death sen­tence, indi­cat­ing that the pre­vi­ous deci­sions made by the Biden Administration would stand. The DOJ has already indi­cat­ed it will seek more fed­er­al death sen­tences in the first 18 months than it sought in the Trump Administration’s entire first term, includ­ing in sev­er­al states that have abol­ished the death penalty. 

Conclusion

In the 50 years since Gregg v. Georgia was decid­ed, the death penal­ty has been shaped by polit­i­cal, cul­tur­al, and social forces. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, heat­ed polit­i­cal rhetoric drove the pas­sage of new ​“tough on crime” laws, and overzeal­ous pros­e­cu­tion poli­cies sent thou­sands to death row. Since the turn of the mil­len­ni­um, how­ev­er, all indi­ca­tors mea­sur­ing the death penal­ty have trend­ed down, shaped by the public’s aware­ness of con­tin­u­ing racism, errors, and arbi­trari­ness, and new con­cerns about grow­ing secre­cy and cost. As a result, pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty is now at its low­est point in 50 years. 

It is too ear­ly to know whether the unusu­al uptick in exe­cu­tions in 2025 will repeat in 2026; at the six-month mark, there have been few­er exe­cu­tions (16) than there were in the first half of 2025. But one thing appears clear: the answer will large­ly depend on whether the deci­sions of elect­ed politi­cians are guid­ed by the val­ues and wish­es of their con­stituents — or made in fur­ther­ance of a polit­i­cal agen­da.  

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