After five recent executions around the U.S., the Death Penalty Information Center says that eight more are scheduled for the final few months of 2024. If at least seven of those executions go forward as planned, the U.S. will have completed 26 executions, which would be more than in any calendar year since 2015, says Ohio State University law Prof. Douglas Berman in his Sentencing Law and Policy blog. That total is a relatively paltry number in the nation's capital punishment history. In the 1930s, the U.S. averaged well over 150 executions per year. From 1995 to 2014, the states executed, on average, 56 persons per year, and hit a modern peak of 98 executions in 1999.
State executions were trending down in the final years of the Trump administration and now are trending up in the final years of the Biden administration. These trends seem especially notable given that candidate Joe Biden pledged to work to "eliminate the death penalty." Writing at Inquest, Lee Kovarsky highlights in this new essay how this year's presidential election could prove an inflection point in capital punishment history. The substitle of the piece says, "The presidential candidates are worlds apart on the death penalty. The winner could either jolt or sap the energy of the movement to end it."
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