Supreme Court

No Stays Among Rising Number of Executions (47) 

The United States Supreme Court denied every request to stay an exe­cu­tion in 2025. Prisoners asked the Court to stay their exe­cu­tions for a vari­ety of rea­sons, includ­ing to review the legal­i­ty of meth­ods of exe­cu­tion, con­sid­er con­sti­tu­tion­al errors in their cas­es, and enforce the Court’s own prece­dent. None were suc­cess­ful. The last time the Court went an entire year with­out grant­i­ng a stay of exe­cu­tion was in 2022, and before that, in 2013. 

The lack of stays is a depar­ture from pre­vi­ous years when there were a com­pa­ra­ble num­ber of exe­cu­tions (2011 and 2012). In 2011, when there were 43 exe­cu­tions, the Court grant­ed six stays to four indi­vid­u­als; in 2012, also with 43 exe­cu­tions, the Court grant­ed two stays of execution.

During the 2010 through 2017 Supreme Court terms, 9% of death-sen­­tenced pris­on­ers received stays of exe­cu­tion. Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the Court at the begin­ning of the 2018 term, cement­ing a 5 – 4 con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty, which grew to 6 – 3 with the addi­tion of Justice Amy Coney Barrett in 2020. From the 2018 term through the 2024 term, which end­ed in ear­ly October this year, the Court grant­ed stays of exe­cu­tion to just 4% of appli­cants. The con­ser­v­a­tive Court major­i­ty has been clear that it dis­fa­vors end-stage cap­i­tal appeals and places great val­ue on achieving ​“final­i­ty” in cap­i­tal cas­es — a stance seem­ing­ly con­firmed by the absence of any exe­cu­tion stays this year. 

New research con­duct­ed by DPI also shows that a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of peo­ple fac­ing exe­cu­tion do not uti­lize their final appeal oppor­tu­ni­ty at the Supreme Court. No final request for a stay of exe­cu­tion was filed for 13 pris­on­ers, out of 47 exe­cut­ed in 2025; only four of these 13 were ​“vol­un­teers” who waived all final appeals. Since October 2010, at least 85 non-vol­un­­teers have been exe­cut­ed with­out ask­ing the Supreme Court to inter­vene before their exe­cu­tion — or 21% of all non-vol­un­­teers exe­cut­ed dur­ing that time. 

The con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty Court has been much more like­ly to lift low­er court stays at the behest of states seek­ing to pro­ceed with exe­cu­tions. From 2011 to 2017, the Court grant­ed 40% of state requests to vacate a low­er court stay. Since Justice Kavanaugh joined the Court in October 2018, how­ev­er, the Court has lift­ed 89% of low­er court stays on state request — often with­out expla­na­tion. No state made a request to the Court to vacate a stay in 2025. 

Capital pris­on­ers have always faced daunt­ing odds when­ev­er they request inter­ven­tion by the Supreme Court. In 2025, death-sen­­tenced pris­on­ers asked the Court to review con­sti­tu­tion­al claims in their cas­es or grant a stay of exe­cu­tion 196 times; the Court agreed just three times (2%). State offi­cials, with many few­er requests, have bet­ter chances: the Court grant­ed one of four state requests in cap­i­tal cas­es (25%) this past year. 

Four Death Penalty Decisions in Favor of Prisoners 

The Court decid­ed four cap­i­tal cas­es this year, all in favor of pris­on­ers. Last year, the Court ruled against pris­on­ers in all three cap­i­tal cas­es it reviewed.¹ For the most part, how­ev­er, this year’s rul­ings did not rely on, strength­en, or estab­lish new prece­dent in cap­i­tal cas­es regard­ing eli­gi­bil­i­ty for the death penal­ty or essen­tial con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions. Instead, the cap­i­tal pris­on­ers pre­vailed almost entire­ly on nar­row procedural grounds. 

Brenda Andrew: Rare Prisoner Win Highlights Use of Prejudicial, Gender-Specific Evidence 

On January 21, the Supreme Court sum­mar­i­ly vacat­ed and remand­ed the appeal of Oklahoma pris­on­er Brenda Andrew, hold­ing that she prop­er­ly relied on Payne v. Tennessee (1991) when she argued that the high­ly sex­u­al­ized evi­dence pre­sent­ed by the state in her cap­i­tal tri­al was so prej­u­di­cial that it vio­lat­ed her Fourteenth Amendment right to due process. At her 2004 tri­al for the mur­der of her hus­band, the pros­e­cu­tion referred to Ms. Andrew as a ​“slut pup­py” in clos­ing argu­ments, dis­played Ms. Andrew’s ​“thong under­wear” to the jury, and offered tes­ti­mo­ny about how Ms. Andrew often had sex in her car. The pros­e­cu­tion asked witnesses ​“whether a good moth­er would dress or behave in the way Andrew had.” 

Importantly, the Court did not hold that the government’s behav­ior vio­lat­ed her due process rights — only that Ms. Andrew was enti­tled to argue that it did, because pri­or Court precedent ​“estab­lished a gen­er­al rule that the erro­neous admis­sion of prej­u­di­cial evi­dence could vio­late due process.” The Tenth Circuit had refused to even con­sid­er Ms. Andrew’s argu­ment because it wrong­ly failed to rec­og­nize that prin­ci­ple. Making clear the lim­its of its hold­ing, the Court’s per curi­am deci­sion not­ed that the ​“Court today says noth­ing about the strength of the evi­dence against Andrew because the issue of prej­u­dice in both the guilt and sen­tenc­ing phas­es of the tri­al is one for the Tenth Circuit to con­sid­er.” The Tenth Circuit is now weigh­ing that ques­tion on the mer­its; at oral argu­ments on remand in June, one judge sug­gest­ed that the evi­dence was relevant because ​“sex is some­times a very strong motive that caus­es peo­ple to do very bad things.” A deci­sion remains pending. 

Ruben Gutierrez and David Wood: Texas Again Rebuked for Refusing to Test DNA 

On June 26, the Court ruled in favor of Ruben Gutierrez on a com­plex pro­ce­dur­al ques­tion regard­ing his efforts to secure post-con­vic­­tion DNA test­ing of crime scene evi­dence. Mr. Gutierrez was sen­tenced to death based on his alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion in a rob­bery-mur­der but has long main­tained that he was out­side the trail­er where the crime took place and did not know that the vic­tim would be killed. If true, Mr. Gutierrez could still be con­vict­ed of first-degree mur­der but would not be eli­gi­ble for a death sen­tence, which can only be imposed in Texas if the defendant ​“actu­al­ly caused” the death, ​“intend­ed to kill” the vic­tim, or ​“antic­i­pat­ed that a human life would be tak­en.” Mr. Gutierrez argues that DNA test­ing of items from the crime scene will show that he was not present in the trail­er and bol­ster his argu­ment that he is inel­i­gi­ble for death. 

For near­ly fif­teen years, pros­e­cu­tors refused requests to test the evi­dence because a Texas law known as Article 64 only allows for post-con­vic­­tion DNA test­ing when it would under­mine a con­vic­tion, not just a sen­tence as in Mr. Gutierrez’s case. He brought a fed­er­al civ­il rights law­suit argu­ing that the state had vio­lat­ed due process. A fed­er­al dis­trict court agreed with Mr. Gutierrez and held the strict­ness of Article 64 ren­dered his habeas rights merely ​“illu­so­ry.” 

But in an unusu­al deci­sion, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, hold­ing that Mr. Gutierrez did not have stand­ing to bring the law­suit. Standing requires a ​“like­ly rem­e­dy,” and the Fifth Circuit con­clud­ed that the incal­ci­trant state pros­e­cu­tor would refuse to fol­low the court order, mak­ing a remedy both ​“unlike­ly” and unavailable. 

In revers­ing the Fifth Circuit, the Supreme Court did not decide the sub­stan­tive ques­tion of whether Mr. Gutierrez is enti­tled to test the DNA evi­dence that could remove him from death row. Its rul­ing was lim­it­ed to the con­clu­sion that Mr. Gutierrez now has stand­ing to bring a fed­er­al civ­il rights law­suit to sup­port his quest for post-con­vic­­tion DNA testing. ​“That a pros­e­cu­tor might even­tu­al­ly find anoth­er rea­son, ground­ed in Article 64 or else­where, to deny a prisoner’s request for DNA test­ing does not viti­ate his stand­ing to argue that the cit­ed rea­sons vio­lat­ed his rights under the Due Process Clause,” Justice Sotomayor wrote for the major­i­ty. Mr. Gutierrez’s law­suit clears the basic pro­ce­dur­al thresh­old and will now be con­sid­ered on the mer­its by a Texas court. 

Justice Thomas, along with Justice Alito, dis­sent­ed from the decision. ​“The Constitution,” Justice Thomas wrote, ​“does not require any State to estab­lish pro­ce­dures for state pris­on­ers to chal­lenge the valid­i­ty of their con­vic­tions after tri­al.” The Supreme Court’s deci­sion, he concluded, ​“serves no pur­pose oth­er than to exac­er­bate the already egre­gious delays endem­ic to capital litigation.” 

This is not the first time that the Supreme Court has heard appeals based on Texas offi­cials’ refusal to autho­rize post-con­vic­­tion DNA test­ing under Article 64. Texas blocked death-sen­­tenced pris­on­er Rodney Reed’s fed­er­al law­suit aimed at secur­ing DNA test­ing, argu­ing it should be dis­missed as untime­ly. The Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that Mr. Reed’s law­suit was indeed time­ly. However, on remand, Texas offi­cials again refused to test the mur­der weapon, argu­ing that Mr. Reed doesn’t qual­i­fy for Article 64 relief because the statute requires the DNA evi­dence to be non-con­t­a­m­i­­nat­ed, and — in a twist — the state itself may have con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed the evi­dence by han­dling it in court. Mr. Reed appealed, and his lat­est peti­tion is now pend­ing at the Supreme Court. 

In June, the Supreme Court sum­mar­i­ly grant­ed cer­tio­rari and remand­ed David Wood’s case in light of its deci­sion in Gutierrez, but the Fifth Circuit again reject­ed Mr. Wood’s law­suit just a month lat­er. DNA test­ing exclud­ed Mr. Wood from a blood­stain on the clothes of the vic­tim, and he sought Article 64 relief to test oth­er crime scene evi­dence as well as a sam­ple tak­en from an alter­nate sus­pect. Like for Mr. Reed and Mr. Gutierrez, Texas offi­cials refused to per­mit test­ing, and the state’s high­est crim­i­nal court upheld their refusal in what Mr. Wood char­ac­ter­izes as its ​“fif­­teen-year, twen­­ty-three case unbro­ken string of deny­ing DNA test­ing appeals.” Mr. Wood’s attor­neys filed a new peti­tion at the Supreme Court on November 4. 

Richard Glossip: Prosecutorial Misconduct Results in New Trial 

On February 25, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 2 in favor of a new tri­al for Richard Glossip in an unmis­tak­ably sub­stan­tive win. Mr. Glossip’s sec­ond time at the Supreme Court focused on his argu­ment that the pros­e­cu­tion with­held mate­r­i­al excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence at tri­al, includ­ing the star pros­e­cu­tion witness’s diag­no­sis of bipo­lar dis­or­der, and know­ing­ly elicit­ed false tes­ti­mo­ny to sup­port the state’s the­o­ry that Mr. Glossip had com­mit­ted a mur­der-for-hire. Oklahoma’s Attorney General, in a rare con­ces­sion, had con­fessed error in the case, yet Oklahoma’s high­est court still denied relief. In an opin­ion authored by Justice Sotomayor, the Court held that Mr. Glossip was enti­tled to a new tri­al based on the pros­e­cu­tors’ misconduct. 

The deci­sion in Glossip is the Court’s first major rul­ing in favor of a death-sen­­tenced pris­on­er based on a sub­stan­tive con­sti­tu­tion­al tri­al vio­la­tion since 2019, when the Court over­turned the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Curtis Flowers based on racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in jury selec­tion. All sub­se­quent cap­i­tal deci­sions have large­ly turned on nar­row and fact-spe­­cif­ic pro­ce­dur­al issues or prob­lems regard­ing the prisoner’s exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dure. Two summary ​“shad­ow dock­et” deci­sions dealt with sub­stan­tive con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tions, but nei­ther had the effect of over­turn­ing the prisoner’s con­vic­tion or sen­tence.²

Dissenting Justices Raise Constitutional Concerns 

This year, the Court’s denials of review in cap­i­tal cas­es once again prompt­ed a num­ber of dis­sents from the Court’s liberal members.

Refusal to Clarify or Enforce Precedent 

The Court reject­ed the case of Charles Crawford, whose tri­al attor­neys told the jury he was guilty against his express wish­es — a seem­ing­ly straight­for­ward vio­la­tion of the Court’s hold­ing in McCoy v. Louisiana (2018). A McCoy vio­la­tion is a struc­tur­al error that requires a new tri­al.³ However, because Mr. Crawford’s conviction became ​“final” before McCoy, Louisiana courts had refused to give him the ben­e­fit of that deci­sion. His attor­neys asked the Supreme Court to clar­i­fy whether McCoy should be applied retroactively. ​“Charles Ray Crawford has iden­ti­fied an impor­tant con­sti­tu­tion­al issue that this Court has not addressed and has divid­ed courts around the coun­try,” Justice Sotomayor wrote in dis­sent from the denial of cer­tio­rari, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson. ​“The Court refus­es to resolve that ques­tion, even though a man’s life is in the bal­ance.” Mr. Crawford died by lethal injec­tion in Mississippi on October 15. 

As in Crawford, the Court refused anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty this year to clar­i­fy or enforce its own prece­dent. Areli Escobar won sum­ma­ry relief from the Court in 2023 because the dis­trict attor­ney in his case con­ced­ed error. The DA admit­ted that the pros­e­cu­tion had wrong­ly relied on com­pro­mised foren­sic evi­dence ana­lyzed by the scan­­dal-plagued and now-defunct Austin Police Department Crime Lab; lat­er DNA test­ing was incon­clu­sive. Yet after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals again ruled against Mr. Escobar on remand, the Supreme Court denied relief on March 23 this year with­out com­ment. The case had attract­ed numer­ous ami­cus briefs, includ­ing one from a group of for­mer pros­e­cu­tors and state attor­neys gen­er­al who argued that the ​“prosecution’s respon­si­bil­i­ty for con­fess­ing error is a solemn one — not under­tak­en light­ly,” and crit­i­cized the low­er court for its fail­ure to give the con­ces­sion appro­pri­ate weight. They urged the Court to grant cer­tio­rari a sec­ond time and ​“again stop this run­away train.” The denial means the ques­tion Mr. Escobar asked of the Court remains unanswered: ​“Whether due process of law requires rever­sal, where a cap­i­tal con­vic­tion is so infect­ed with errors that the State no longer seeks to defend it.” 

“Procedural Thicket” Obstructs Review of Critical Constitutional Issues 

During Lance Shockley’s cap­i­tal tri­al in Missouri, the jury fore­man brought his self-pub­­lished book to delib­er­a­tions and showed it to oth­er jurors — a book where the fic­tion­al pro­tag­o­nist sought vig­i­lante jus­tice against the per­pe­tra­tor of a crime that mir­rored the crime Mr. Shockley was accused of com­mit­ting. The jury con­vict­ed Mr. Shockley. When the mis­con­duct became known, the tri­al judge removed the fore­man from the jury, but accord­ing to Justice Sotomayor, Mr. Shockley’s attorney ​“inex­plic­a­bly” declined to call wit­ness­es to sup­port his motion for a mis­tri­al. The same jury then sen­tenced Mr. Shockley to death. 

The ques­tion the Supreme Court refused to hear was about Mr. Shockley’s abil­i­ty to mere­ly appeal his claim that his attor­ney had been uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly inef­fec­tive. Four fed­er­al cir­cuits have held that a death-sen­­tenced pris­on­er may appeal the deci­sion of the dis­trict court so long as one of the three judges on the cir­cuit court’s pan­el votes to issue a ​“cer­tifi­cate of appeal­a­bil­i­ty” (COA), while five fed­er­al cir­cuit courts — includ­ing the Eighth Circuit, which heard Mr. Shockley’s case — have inter­pret­ed fed­er­al law to mean that a major­i­ty of the pan­el must agree to issue a COA. For Mr. Shockley, whose request for a COA was denied 2 to 1, which approach is fol­lowed would mean the dif­fer­ence between the end of his appeals and the oppor­tu­ni­ty for fur­ther pro­ceed­ings. But the Court declined to resolve this clear circuit split. 

Justice Sotomayor authored the dis­sent from denial of cer­tio­rari on March 31, joined by Justice Jackson. She main­tained that adopt­ing a sin­­gle-judge stan­dard would not only uni­fy low­er court prac­tice but would also pro­mote effi­cien­cy by encour­ag­ing courts to reach the mer­its of con­sti­tu­tion­al claims instead of get­ting mired in pro­ce­dur­al dis­putes. Justice Sotomayor wrote that the court of appeals in Mr. Shockley’s case ​“plain­ly erred” when it ​“treat­ed as not even debat­able the District Court’s denial of relief” for inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel. Mr. Shockley was exe­cut­ed by Missouri state offi­cials on October 14, 2025. 

Stacey Humphreys’ tri­al in Georgia also involved what Justice Sotomayor termed ​“extreme juror mis­con­duct.” One juror in Mr. Humphreys’ tri­al lied to attor­neys dur­ing voir dire about her own expe­ri­ence as a vic­tim of attempt­ed rape and robbery, ​“then bul­lied the oth­er jurors into vot­ing for death based on that pri­or expe­ri­ence.” After an ini­tial vote of 11 – 1 for life with­out parole, the juror ​“yelled, cursed, and screamed that she would ​‘stay [t]here till for­ev­er if’ that is what it took ​‘for [Mr. Humphreys] to get death.’” Her ​“mis­con­duct appears to have sin­gle­hand­ed­ly changed the ver­dict from life with­out parole to death,” Justice Sotomayor wrote in dis­sent from the denial of cer­tio­rari on October 14, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson. 

Yet like in Mr. Shockley’s case, that under­ly­ing claim was ​“buried in a pro­ce­dur­al thick­et,” accord­ing to Justice Sotomayor. That ​“thick­et” involved Mr. Humphreys’ attor­neys’ fail­ure to raise the issue on direct appeal; Georgia’s ​“no-impeach­­ment rule,” which bars the use of juror tes­ti­mo­ny to impeach a ver­dict; and the Eleventh Circuit’s ​“unclear” appli­ca­tion of fed­er­al habeas stan­dards to the state court opinions. ​“In a cap­i­tal case with a poten­tial­ly mer­i­to­ri­ous juror-mis­­­con­duct claim, mere con­fu­sion about a low­er court’s rea­son­ing does not jus­ti­fy clos­ing the door to relief alto­geth­er,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. ​“Tragically, the Court denies review instead, allow­ing a death sen­tence taint­ed by a sin­gle juror’s extra­or­di­nary mis­con­duct to stand.” 

Alarm Over Use of Nitrogen Gas 

The Court repeat­ed­ly refused to con­sid­er seri­ous con­cerns — and grow­ing evi­dence — about the dan­gers of using nitro­gen gas as an exe­cu­tion method, despite increas­ing­ly alarmed dissents. 

Jessie Hoffman was the first per­son sched­uled for nitro­gen gas exe­cu­tion in Louisiana, and the first to face the method any­where out­side of Alabama. He was also a Buddhist, and ​“in Buddhist tra­di­tion, med­i­ta­tive breath­ing at the time of death car­ries pro­found spir­i­tu­al sig­nif­i­cance, found­ed in the core belief that med­i­ta­tion and unfet­tered breath at the time of tran­si­tion from life to death deter­mines the qual­i­ty of rebirth,” his attor­neys wrote. Mr. Hoffman’s defense team argued that exe­cut­ing him by nitro­gen gas would vio­late his reli­gious rights by inter­fer­ing with that spir­i­tu­al process. The Supreme Court denied his appli­ca­tion on March 18, 2025, and Mr. Hoffman was exe­cut­ed by the state of Louisiana lat­er that day. In a rare dis­sent from denial of the stay, his first in a cap­i­tal case since join­ing the Court in 2017, Justice Gorsuch wrote that the low­er court had ​“no license to declare…whether an adherent has ​‘cor­rect­ly per­ceived’ the com­mands of his reli­gion”; he would have remand­ed the case for the court to prop­er­ly address Mr. Hoffman’s reli­gious exercise claim. 

Historically, tra­di­tion dic­tat­ed that when four jus­tices vot­ed to grant cer­tio­rari, a fifth jus­tice would cast a ​“cour­tesy vote” to stay the exe­cu­tion. This prac­tice rec­og­nized the pro­ce­dur­al asym­me­try that four votes are required to grant cer­tio­rari, but five votes are required to stay an exe­cu­tion. It pre­vent­ed the dilem­ma of hav­ing a case secure enough legal inter­est for for­mal con­sid­er­a­tion by the Court but not enough to stop the exe­cu­tion. But in Mr. Hoffman’s case, that worst-case sce­nario is exact­ly what hap­pened. Four Supreme Court Justices — Sotomayor, Kagan, Jackson, and Gorsuch — vot­ed to grant cer­tio­rari and review his reli­gious free­dom claim. No cour­tesy vote, how­ev­er, was cast to stay his execution. 

On October 23, Justice Sotomayor issued a sear­ing dis­sent from the Court’s denial in Anthony Boyd’s case, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson. Justice Sotomayor opened by ask­ing the read­er to set a timer for four minutes. 

The dis­sent acknowl­edged the signs of dis­tress observed dur­ing Alabama’s four pre­vi­ous nitro­gen gas exe­cu­tions, including ​“appar­ent con­scious­ness for min­utes, not sec­onds; and vio­lent con­vuls­ing, eyes bulging, con­sis­tent thrash­ing against the restraints, and clear gasp­ing for the air that will not come.” The jus­tices argued that ​“when a State intro­duces an exper­i­men­tal method of exe­cu­tion that super­adds psy­cho­log­i­cal ter­ror as a nec­es­sary fea­ture of its suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion, courts should enforce the Eighth Amendment’s man­date against cru­el and unusual punishment.” 

The dis­sent­ing jus­tices could not have antic­i­pat­ed just how long Mr. Boyd’s exe­cu­tion would last that night. Mr. Boyd con­vulsed against the restraints for over 15 min­utes, draw­ing over 225 ​“ago­nized” breaths by the count of a media wit­ness. He was declared dead after 40 min­utes, the longest nitro­gen gas execution yet. 

“Allowing the nitro­gen hypox­ia exper­i­ment to con­tin­ue despite mount­ing and unbro­ken evi­dence that it vio­lates the Constitution by inflict­ing unnec­es­sary suf­fer­ing fails to pro­tect the dig­ni­ty of the Nation we have been, the Nation we are, and the Nation we aspire to be,” the dissenters concluded.