United States Reaches 1600 Executions, Demonstrating Disconnect Between Elected Officials and Declining Public Support

The United States has reached a milestone in the administration of capital punishment this week. All four scheduled executions in Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Alabama took place, marking the 1600^th execution in the modern era of the death penalty in the U.S., despite public opinion polls showing growing concerns about the fairness and accuracy of the death penalty and declining support for its use.

The majority of U.S. states have either abandoned use of the death penalty entirely or paused executions (29 states, the District of Columbia and the federal government). A Gallup poll recently found that the percentage of Americans who believe the death penalty is used unfairly increased to 50%, while overall support for the death penalty has been steadily decreasing since 1994, now at a slim majority of 53%. Unlike past years, the death penalty isn’t among top voter priorities during this election year, and neither national political party even mentions use of the death penalty in their platforms.

While all the data continue to show a decline in use and support, a handful of state elected officials have recently expanded use of the death penalty. Utah, South Carolina, Idaho, and Indiana scheduled executions in 2024 after at least a decade-long pause. Several state legislatures have also authorized new methods of execution, and two states (Florida and Tennessee) have added new death-eligible crimes. DPI research suggests that these officials are largely out of step with increasing public concern about the fairness and accuracy of capital punishment—and that zealous approaches to using the death penalty that were once popular are no longer winning the same levels of voter support.

DPI’s data show that even at the peak of use and public support, the death penalty has never been a majority state practice. Since 2012, the number of states conducting executions has remained below 20% in any given year.

The decline in public support can be viewed as a consequence of the many problems with the use of the death penalty. Earlier this year, Larry Roberts was the 200^th person exonerated from death row. His release means that that there has been one exoneration for every 8 executions. DPI has also identified more than 600 death sentences with prosecutorial misconduct so significant that it resulted in a reversal of the conviction or death sentence, or an exoneration.

Longstanding concerns about systemic racism have also persisted. Of the last 100 individuals executed in the United States, a disproportionate number (43%) have been people of color, including 31 who were Black. 72% of the victims in those cases were white.

Three jurisdictions were responsible for more than half (56.8%) of total executions during the last five years: Texas (23), Oklahoma (14), and the federal government (13), which has had a moratorium in place since 2021. Texas and Oklahoma both carried out executions this week. Fewer than 50 new death sentences have been imposed in each of the last five years, showing that juries are increasingly rejecting the death penalty as an option, and those new sentences have occurred in just 12 states.

In the modern era of capital punishment, the state of Texas has conducted 590 executions, more than one-third of the total in the United States. Oklahoma has carried out 126 executions, and Virginia, before abolishing the death penalty in 2021, carried out 113 executions. Of the 1600 executions that have been carried out since 1977, 1418 individuals have been executed by lethal injection, 163 people have been executed by electrocution, 13 people by lethal gas, three by hanging and three by firing squad.

According to data compiled by Professor Michael Radelet, eight botched lethal injection executions have occurred since the 1500th execution in 2019, including the failed execution of Alan Miller in September 2022, one of three botched executions in Alabama that year. On September 26, 2024, the state of Alabama executed Mr. Miller by nitrogen hypoxia. Mr. Miller was the 1600th person executed in the United States since the resumption of capital punishment in 1976.

For more information on 1600 executions, dive deeper into the data, below.