2024 is the tenth consecutive year with fewer than 50 people sentenced to death, further evidence of juries’ reluctance to impose death sentences. As of December 16, there were 26 new death sentences in 2024, imposed in ten states. Florida imposed the most new death sentences with seven. Texas imposed six, Alabama imposed four, California imposed three. Arizona, Idaho, Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio, and Tennessee each had one new death sentence.
In six out of seven new death sentences in Florida, the jury did not reach unanimous verdicts; in the seventh case, the defendant waived his right to a jury and a judge imposed the death sentence. Non-unanimous Florida juries began returning death sentences in 2023 after new legislation was adopted at the request of Governor Ron DeSantis. Florida now has the nation’s lowest threshold for death sentences – only eight out of 12 jurors must agree to impose death. The Florida Supreme Court heard oral arguments on December 12 in two cases raising challenges to the non-unanimous death sentence sentencing scheme. About one-third of new death sentences this year were imposed by non-unanimous juries: six in Florida and three in Alabama. At least ten votes are required for Alabama juries to recommend a death sentence. In 2023, non-unanimous sentences accounted for three new death sentences (one in Florida, two in Alabama) but this year accounted for nine (six in Florida, three in Alabama). Observers accurately predicted that when Florida changed its law there would be an increase in death sentences.
The majority of those sentenced to death this year were identified as white (12 defendants, 46%), followed by Black (ten defendants, 38%), two Latino defendants (8%), and one Asian and one Native American defendant (4% each). In total, 54% (14) of the defendants sentenced to death this year were people of color. All identified as men. Almost a third of the defendants sentenced in 2024 (eight, 31%) are considered “emerging adults,”1 with two of them 19 years old at the time of the crime (one in Alabama and one in California). Marco Antonio Perez, born in 1999, is now the youngest person on Alabama’s death row, at 25. He was sentenced to death in March after a non-unanimous 11 – 1 jury recommendation. In January, the Department of Justice announced its first federal capital prosecution during President Biden’s administration for Payton Gendron, who has already pled guilty and been sentenced to multiple life sentences in state court for the racially motivated killing of ten Black people in New York when he was 18 years old.
There were 46 victims in adjudicated capital cases that resulted in death sentences. Twenty-eight of the victims were female (61%) and 17 were male (39%). One of the victims is a fetal victim; Alabama’s penal code allows for a death sentence for a crime that results in the death of “an unborn.” At least five of the crimes involved victims who were minors (19% of crimes). Among the victims, 25 persons (54%) were white, followed by ten Latino/a (22%), six Black victims (15%), and five Asian victims (12%). At least five out of 26 adjudicated crimes involved a family member or intimate partner or a murder of a law enforcement officer (19% each).
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Experts define “emerging adulthood” as a developmental period of time for individuals into their twenties. See American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology, “Emerging Adulthood,” https://dictionary.apa.org/emerging-adulthood (accessed December 6, 2024).↩︎