Executions are on the rise in the United States. After creeping upward since the coronavirus pandemic, when the country’s use of the death penalty reached a historic low, the numbers have skyrocketed this year.
Forty-one executions have been carried out so far in 2025, and, without intervention from government officials or the courts, another six will take place before January. Three are scheduled for this week: one each in Florida and Oklahoma on Thursday, and another in South Carolina on Friday.
Identifying a previous year in which the prevalence of executions in the U.S. rivaled the current one requires looking back at least decade. Whether or not the remaining six proceed as planned, the death penalty has already had its busiest year since 2012, when 43 people were executed. The last time 47 executions took place over a single 12-month period was 2009.
Criminal justice experts say the factors driving this year’s increase are multifaceted, although they cite partisan pressure and the ripple effects of expired moratoriums as key contributors. There also is a lack of evidence suggesting citizen support for capital punishment has anything to do with it.
“A political effort”
Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, attributes the growing sum of executions to “largely, a political effort.” Her nonprofit organization is recognized among the nation’s leading sources of data and analyses on how capital punishment is applied, but it doesn’t take a position on the issue.
“The number of executions is certainly garnering some headlines right now because it does represent an increase from where we were in years’ past, but there’s absolutely no evidence it represents a change in public support for the death penalty by Americans,” Maher said.
Polling data suggests cultural attitudes nationwide have shifted away from backing the death penalty over the last half-century, with the October results of a Gallup survey showing just 52% of respondents favored the practice. Those results followed a steady decline in Americans’ support for capital punishment since the early 1990s, according to Gallup’s earlier polls, and they also marked a slight drop in support from 2024.
At the same time, both the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Death Penalty Information Center have tracked a dramatic decrease in new death sentences imposed by American juries since an annual peak in 1996, when 316 death sentences were imposed. Three years later, the U.S. executed 98 people, a record high in the modern history of the death penalty.
Juries have sentence far fewer people to death each year — as of August, only 10 people have received death sentences in 2025, according to the Death Penalty Information Center — and the execution rate has generally mirrored that decline since the late 90s. After hitting a trough during the pandemic, executions did start taking place more often year to year, with 11 in 2021, 18 in 2022, 24 in 2023, and 25 in 2024.
Capital punishment under Trump
President Trump issued an executive order upon retaking office that encouraged attorneys general and district attorneys in states across the country to pursue the death penalty more aggressively, especially if an undocumented person is charged with a capital offense or a law enforcement officer has been killed.
The order described capital punishment as “an essential tool for deterring and punishing those who would commit the most heinous crimes,” and claimed its application “continues to enjoy broad popular support.” A number of studies have refuted or at least cast doubt on the theory that the threat of capital punishment meaningfully deters violence. Others have found the overall body of research on the topic to be inconclusive either way.
Mr. Trump’s order also said politicians and judges who oppose capital punishment “have defied and subverted the laws of our country,” using former President Joe Biden’s decision to commute the sentences of most inmates on federal death row as an example of actions that the administration “will not tolerate.”
The executive order came amid a broader backdrop of advocacy for the use of capital punishment under the Trump administration. After ending a 17-year hiatus on federal executions during the last six months of his first term, when he oversaw 13 of them, Mr. Trump more recently pledged to refill federal death row and seek the death penalty for murder cases in Washington, D.C. Pam Bondi, his attorney general, has also prioritized reviving the federal death penalty.
“This administration has talked a lot about the death penalty and has not made any secret about their enthusiasm over the death penalty,” Maher said. “So, for some officials, that environment has made it easier for them to schedule executions to curry favor with this administration.”
Executions this year have taken place in 11 states: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. All but Arizona are led by Republican governors.
Florida has carried out 15 executions in 2025 — the largest share of any state — with three still to go. Alabama and Texas have carried out the second-highest number, with five executions each, a threshold that South Carolina is also expected to reach on Friday. Other than South Carolina, which had its first execution in 13 years in September 2024, those states are typically responsible for most executions that take place in the U.S. annually, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been signing death warrants at an unprecedented pace since January.
“Many of these states that are actively executing people are states that have governors who are politically aligned with the president on this,” said John Blume, director of the Death Penalty Project at Cornell University, referencing DeSantis, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. “They’re very conservative and believe in this, and their attorneys general are too. They believe that in those jurisdictions that, you know, it’s politically expedient for them to appear to be tough on the death penalty.”
Backlogs on death row
Political pressures aren’t the only forces motivating the increase. Multiple states that have executed inmates this year or plan to do so by the year’s end recently resumed executions after lengthy hiatuses, some of which were legally binding.
States like Arizona have restarted executions after being ordered to pause them for various stretches of time, while authorities reviewed capital punishment protocols that had culled criticism and, in several cases, accusations of unconstitutional cruelty. Over the last decade or so, many correctional departments struggled to obtain viable drugs for lethal injections and came under intense public scrutiny as horror stories emerged of repeatedly botched procedures.
As moratoriums lifted in one jurisdiction after another, states started “clearing out the backlog” of death row inmates who could not be executed while they were in place, Blume said. Some had new or renewed ways to do it: Alabama and Louisiana have now authorized the use of nitrogen gas to execute inmates, while South Carolina reintroduced firing squads and in March carried out the nation’s first execution by that method in 15 years. If Friday’s execution proceeds, South Carolina will have used a firing squad to put to death three of five inmates this year.
Lethal injection remains the most common method for putting inmates to death. That could be partly due to Mr. Trump’s executive order, which included a promise to supply “a sufficient supply of drugs needed to carry out lethal injection” to each state that allows executions.
“The death penalty is the only proper punishment for some of the vilest crimes,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, in a statement to CBS News that also contained some of the language from Mr. Trump’s executive order. “President Trump knows this, that’s why he signed an Executive Order on day one of his second term to restore the death penalty and protect public safety.”
