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December 19, 2024

Death Penalty Information Center releases its annual year-end report, "The Death Penalty in 2024"

The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) has a tradition, following the final scheduled execution of a calendar year, of releasing a year-end report with lots of data and other information about capital punishment's administration in the US.  DPIC is critical of problems in the application of the death penalty, and its annual report is often styled to suggest the death penalty is in decline; that has not changed this year even though the total number of death sentences and executions ticked up slightly in 2024.  This year's report is fully titled "The Death Penalty in 2024: Death Sentences and Executions Remain Near Historic Lows Amid Growing Concerns about Fairness and Innocence," and here is its executive summary:

The num­ber of new death sen­tences in 2024 increased from 2023, with 26. The num­ber of peo­ple on death row across the United States has con­tin­ued to decline from a peak pop­u­la­tion in the year 2000.

Public sup­port for the death penal­ty remains at a five-decade low (53%) and Gallup’s recent polling reveals that more than half of young U.S. adults ages 18 through 43 now oppose the death penal­ty. Fewer peo­ple found the death penal­ty moral­ly accept­able this year (55%) than last year (60%).

Significant media atten­tion, pub­lic protest, and sup­port from unlike­ly allies in the cas­es of Marcellus ​“Khaliifah” Williams, Robert Roberson, and Richard Glossip ele­vat­ed the issue of inno­cence in 2024, as the United States marked the mile­stone of 200 death row exonerations.

No indi­vid­ual death-sen­tenced per­son received clemen­cy in 2024, the first year since 2016 with­out any clemen­cy grants. At least two mass clemen­cy cam­paigns are pending decisions.

Death penal­ty-relat­ed leg­is­la­tion was enact­ed in at least six states to lim­it use of the death penal­ty, alter exe­cu­tion meth­ods or pro­to­cols, mod­i­fy pro­ce­dures, and increase secre­cy. Abolition efforts con­tin­ue in more than a dozen states, and efforts to rein­tro­duce the death penal­ty in eight states failed. Only one effort to expand the death penal­ty to non-homi­cide crimes was successful.

The 1600th exe­cu­tion in the mod­ern death penal­ty era occurred in September 2024. The num­ber of peo­ple exe­cut­ed in 2024 remained near­ly the same as 2023, with 25 exe­cu­tions occur­ring in nine states. This was the tenth con­sec­u­tive year with few­er than 30 exe­cu­tions. Utah, South Carolina, and Indiana con­duct­ed their first exe­cu­tions after more than a decade hia­tus. Alabama became the first state to use nitro­gen gas to execute prisoners.

The United States Supreme Court has large­ly aban­doned the crit­i­cal role it has his­tor­i­cal­ly played in reg­u­lat­ing and lim­it­ing use of the death penalty.

The death penal­ty has been abol­ished in prac­tice or in law in a major­i­ty of coun­tries around the world (144), and 2024 saw legal abo­li­tion efforts progress in four more coun­tries. Despite this, glob­al exe­cu­tions increased in 2024 for the third straight year, led by Iran.

The full report includes lots more interesting capital punishment administration data and other information. I am always grateful for the detail accounting DPIC of death sentences that DPIC maintains (and I will there was a comparable resource for LWOP sentences).

December 19, 2024 at 06:20 PM | Permalink

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