« US Sentencing Commission votes on (first?) set of notable "Proposed Amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines (Preliminary)" | Main | The Sentencing Project releases review of "Top Trends in Criminal Justice Reform, 2024" »
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