USA - 2024 Year End Report

USA - “The Death Penalty in 2024: Year End Report”

December 19, 2024:

December 19, 2024 - USA. “The Death Penalty in 2024: Year End Report”
Death Sentences and Executions Remain Near Historic Lows Amid Growing Concerns about Fairness and Innocence ----President Biden and North Carolina Governor Consider Commutations of Death Rows. 4 States Responsible for 76% of Executions.
This year marked the 10th consecutive year where fewer than 30 people were executed (25) and fewer than 50 people were sentenced to death (26), while high profile cases of death-sentenced people attracted significant attention and new, unexpected supporters. At this writing, widespread coalitions of people with diverse perspectives are publicly urging President Biden and North Carolina Governor Cooper to consider commuting the death sentences of prisoners to remedy longstanding concerns about systemic problems with the application of the death penalty.
“In 2024, we saw people with credible evidence of innocence set for execution, followed by extraordinary levels of public frustration and outrage. Several high-profile cases fueled new concerns about whether the death penalty can be used fairly and accurately. A new poll also predicts a steady decline of support in the future, showing for the first time that a majority of adults aged 18 to 43 now oppose the death penalty,” said Robin M. Maher, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI).
Ten states -- Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas -- sentenced people to death in 2024. Just 4 states -- Alabama, California, Florida, and Texas -- account for the majority (20) of new death sentences this year. Florida imposed the highest number of new death sentences, with seven. Texas imposed six new death sentences, while Alabama imposed four, California imposed three, while Arizona, Idaho, Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio, and Tennessee each had one new death sentence.
About 1/3 of the 26 new death sentences were imposed by non-unanimous juries: 6 in Florida and three in Alabama. In 2023, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation reducing the number of votes needed to recommend a death sentence from unanimous to just 8 out of 12 jurors. Observers accurately predicted that this change would result in an increase in Florida death sentences. At least 10 votes are required for Alabama juries to recommend a death sentence, while every other state requires unanimity. Non-unanimous juries have been criticized for silencing minority voices on a jury, increasing the chances that an innocent person will be convicted, and undermining public confidence in the death penalty system.
9 states -- Alabama (6), Florida (1), Georgia (1), Indiana (1), Missouri (4), Oklahoma (4), South Carolina (2), Texas (5), and Utah (1) -- carried out executions in 2024. Four states – Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas – were responsible for 76 % of executions.
Executions resumed for the 1st time in decades in Indiana, South Carolina, and Utah after elected officials announced they had secured execution drugs or approved new methods. Idaho attempted to resume executions this year after a 12-year hiatus but called off the botched execution of Thomas Creech when the execution team was unable to establish an IV line after an hour of attempts.
Public support for the death penalty in 2024 remains at a 5-decade low (53%), and polling reveals significant and growing generational differences, as well as rising disapproval among people ages 43 and younger. Also, a growing number of conservative lawmakers and elected prosecutors publicly supported prisoners with compelling evidence of innocence, including Richard Glossip in Oklahoma, Marcellus Williams in Missouri, and Robert Roberson in Texas.
3 death row prisoners were exonerated in 2024. DPI’s ongoing research uncovered two additional exonerations from prior years, bringing the number of U.S. death row exonerations since 1972 to 200. In Texas, Melissa Lucio, who came within 2 days of execution in 2022, was declared “actually innocent” by a trial court in October.
The U.S. Supreme Court turned away almost all petitions (145 of 148, 98%) from death-sentenced prisoners in 2024, even those with strong evidence of innocence. This approach reflects the Court’s retreat from the critical role it has historically played in regulating and limiting use of the death penalty. The Court’s December 6 certiorari grant in Rivers v. Lumpkin, a non-capital case, threatens to further restrict pathways to relief on appeal for death-sentenced prisoners.
The number of new death sentences (26) and executions (25) in 2024 represented an increase from 2023 when there were 21 new death sentences and 24 executions but represented a dramatic drop from 20 years ago when there were 130 new death sentences and 59 executions. This change can be attributed to an increase in non-unanimous death sentences in Florida, where the law was changed in April of 2023, and Alabama, the only 2 states that permit non-unanimous death sentencing. In 2023, non-unanimous sentences accounted for 3 new death sentences (1 in Florida, 2 in Alabama) but this year accounted for nine (6 in Florida, 3 in Alabama).
Executions reflect the views of jurors at the time of sentencing—increasingly, views that are 20 or 30 years out of date. The majority of individuals executed in 2024 would likely not receive death sentences if their cases were tried today. Legislative and legal changes, increased scrutiny of prosecutorial practices, and shifts in societal attitudes over recent decades have significantly affected whether defendants receive death sentences.
Today’s jurors, with their better understanding of how severe mental illness, developmental disabilities, youth, and profound trauma affect behavior, are increasingly choosing life sentences over death sentences. All but 1 individual executed in 2024 had at least 1 of the above-listed vulnerabilities. 6 of the 25 people executed were 21 or younger at the time of the crime for which they were executed.
As has been historically true, prisoners of color and prisoners convicted of killing white victims were overrepresented among those executed. 12 of the 25 prisoners executed this year were people of color.
Nine were Black, two were Latino, and one was Native American. The vast majority of defendants (80%) were executed for killing at least one white victim.
While six people of color were executed for murders of white victims, no white defendant was executed for the murder of a person of color.
Throughout U.S. history, the death penalty has been more likely to be imposed in cases involving white victims, especially if the defendant is a person of color. Since 1976, more than ten times as many Black defendants have been executed for murders of white victims than white defendants executed for the murders of Black victims. 14 of the defendants sentenced to death this year (54%) were people of color.
Both the average age at execution (52 years) and the average time from sentencing to execution (22.2 years) remained close to last year’s record highs of 54 years old and 23 years spent on death row.
Death penalty-related legislation was enacted in at least 6 states (California, Delaware, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah) to limit use of the death penalty, alter execution methods or protocols, modify procedures, and increase secrecy. Death penalty 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, in Tennessee.,

https://dpic-cdn.org/production/documents/The-Death-Penalty-in-2024-Press-Release.pdf?dm=1734627216