On July 8, the Death Penalty Information Center, or DPIC, released its midyear update on capital punishment in the United States. Many of the findings were sadly, disturbingly familiar. For example, racial bias still plays a large role in who gets executed, and the Supreme Court continues to allow executions to proceed even when those being put to death have strong claims of innocence.
But there was also encouraging news.
In 1996, 317 defendants received death sentences, the second most of any year in the past half-century. Then began a steady and dramatic decline: 111 death sentences in 2006, 31 in 2016. And so far this year, only 12 people in the entire country have received death sentences. That is on pace to match last year, when juries handed down 23 death sentences. In short, the death penalty is dying a gradual death.
The death row population has dropped by half in the last 25 years and is below 2,000 for the first time since the 1980s.
Take Texas, where a former governor once campaigned for re-election using photos of people executed during his tenure. Thirty-three people received death sentences in Texas in 1996. So far this year, that number is just two, the DPIC reports. Florida has led the way with four new death sentences, but in none of them did juries reach unanimous verdicts. The law in the Sunshine State now allows juries to impose such punishments if eight jurors agree to it.
Fewer death sentences means the execution pipeline is drying up. The death row population has dropped by half in the last 25 years and is below 2,000 for the first time since the 1980s. If the trend continues, America’s death rows will gradually empty as inmates are exonerated, pass away or executed. And the experience of countries that ended capital punishment suggests this trend will lead to lower, not higher murder rates.
Executions still understandably grab the headlines, especially given some of the gruesome methods in use. But decisions not to seek or impose the death penalty are more consequential for the future of capital punishment. If we look at them, we already seem to be on the road to abolition.
Abolition will come not in some sudden way, like when the Supreme Court paused executions for several years in the 1970s. Rather, it will come in the day-to-day decisions of prosecutors who decline to bring capital prosecutions or in jury rooms where jurors refuse to condemn a convicted defendant to death. States may keep the death penalty on the books but rarely use it. Of the 27 states that authorize capital punishment, new death sentences have been handed down in only seven of them this year.
And, as the DPIC notes, in the 31 capital cases that went to a sentencing verdict, juries voted for life in prison without parole 19 times. As the DPIC explains, “death-qualified jurors who have indicated their willingness to impose death sentences … choose life sentences more often than they chose death.” Even in Alabama and Florida, the two states that don’t require unanimous juries to impose death sentences, jurors more often chose life.
None of that has stopped the Trump Administration from ramping up capital prosecutions.
That result resembles what has been found in numerous surveys. When given a choice of punishments for murder, more and more people say they prefer the latter. Today, when many Americans think about capital punishment, they think about false convictions, miscarriages of justice and systemic racism. If they are called to serve on a capital jury, they bring those concerns with them. That makes the prosecution’s burden of persuading them to vote for death harder than ever.
Of course, we can’t know exactly how many times prosecutors could bring capital charges but decline to do so. But we do know that bringing capital charges is a very expensive proposition. According to Equal Justice USA, “More than a dozen states have found that death penalty cases are up to 10 times more expensive than comparable non-death penalty cases.” Even if prosecutors can secure a death sentence, that is only the start of an arduous process of appeals. The result, research has shown, is that the chance that anyone sentenced to death will be executed is about 1 in 5.
Of course, none of that has stopped the Trump administration from ramping up capital prosecutions. We do know that by the end of April, the Department of Justice had already authorized capital prosecutions in 44 cases.
Nonetheless, since Jan. 20, 2025, when the president started his second term, there have been no federal death sentences as well as no executions.
Americans are realizing that a decline in death sentences does not mean the world ends or violent crime rises. Moreover, that decline means that fewer victims’ families are going to be put through the wringer of a capital case that will go on for decades. Declining death sentences portend a future in which the death penalty dies and citizens are none the worse for it.
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