Executions are up in 2025 — should death penalty abolitionists change their tactics?
Bell's execution would have attracted little attention but for the fact that it was the 26th of this year so far — one more than the total number executed all last year. For death penalty abolitionists, this is a discouraging milestone.
What's more, there are 10 more executions currently scheduled to occur before Dec. 31. That would make 2025 the year with the most executions since 2015, when 28 people were put to death. This year is also on pace to be the fourth in a row in which the number of executions has risen since the low point during the COVID-19 pandemic, when only 11 people were executed.
For the last decade or so, those opposed to capital punishment have been repeating the same mantra as a way to mark the progress of their campaign to end state killing in this country: The number of executions is down. The number of new death sentences is also down. And public support has fallen sharply from historic highs 30 years ago.
Each of those developments has been fueled by what I have called 'the new abolitionism.' Instead of emphasizing abstract moral arguments against capital punishment, new abolitionists focus on the death penalty's unreliability as a deterrent and the prospect of executing innocent people. They highlight the pervasive racial discrimination that marks every stage of the death penalty process and the frequency with which executions are botched.
So, the question naturally arises: Is the spike in executions so far this year a sign that the abolitionist campaign is running out of steam? If so, is it time for a change in tactics?
The answer to both questions is no.
We can see why by probing more deeply into the reasons executions have increased this year, as well as examining trends in death sentences and public opinion. We also have to understand that the road to the abolition of capital punishment will not be uniform or smooth.
Like other political and legal campaigns, it will move toward its goal in an irregular pattern: two steps forward, one step back. This year's increase in the number of executions is one of those backward steps.
Almost half of them have occurred in just two states, Florida and Texas. Driven by a pro-death penalty governor, who has made the death penalty a top priority, Florida executed six people in 2023 but only carried out one execution last year. Texas led the way in 2023 with eight executions, and followed up by putting five more people to death in 2024.
But this year, other states, like Indiana, which had paused executions because they have been unable to secure reliable supplies of the drugs needed to carry out lethal injections, rejoined the group of states carrying them out. Some revised their lethal injection protocols or even authorized other execution methods.
However, in the Hoosier State, officials do not seem anxious to open the execution floodgates. Republican Gov. Mike Braun has said about capital punishment, 'There are legislators that wonder if it's still relevant. … I'm going to listen to them, the courts, and the broader discussion in general.'
And even as Indiana resumed executions, its prosecutors are not pursuing new death sentences. In fact, no one has been sentenced to death there since 2013.
That is an increasingly common pattern in states where capital punishment is still an authorized punishment. It is important because the number of new death sentences is a better indicator of capital punishment's status and future than is the number of executions. And new death sentences remain at historic lows.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there have been only ten new death sentences concentrated in just six states — Alabama, California, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana and Oklahoma. That total is down nearly 30 percent from the same period last year, when there were 14 new death sentences.
Abolitionists can also take heart from the fact that surveys of the American public, which indicate that support for the death penalty, at just 53 percent, is at a 50-year low.
Abolitionists have shone a spotlight on the grim realities of the death penalty's day-to-day administration, and this has paid dividends in changing the national conversation about capital punishment. And in spite of the increase in the number of executions this year, it remains true that the more people learn about the death penalty, the less they like it.
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