Death row still exists in the United States. Twenty-seven states retain capital punishment, and the federal government and the military run their own separate death penalty systems. As of early 2025, roughly 2,100 people were held under a sentence of death nationwide, down from more than 3,500 at the peak in the late 1990s. Executions have not disappeared either: 47 people were put to death across 11 states in 2025, the highest annual total in years.
Which States Still Have the Death Penalty
Twenty-seven states currently authorize capital punishment. Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have abolished it, either through legislation or through court rulings.1Death Penalty Information Center. State and Federal Info Delaware repealed its statute in 2024. Washington formally removed its capital punishment law from the books in 2023, after the state supreme court had already struck it down in 2018. When a state abolishes the death penalty, existing sentences are typically converted to life without parole.
In states that keep it, the death penalty is reserved for the most serious offenses, almost always first-degree murder combined with aggravating circumstances. The Supreme Court set that framework in Gregg v. Georgia (1976), which required states to narrow the pool of death-eligible defendants by identifying specific aggravating factors rather than leaving the decision to open jury discretion.2Justia. Gregg v Georgia, 428 US 153 Typical aggravators include killing multiple victims, murdering a law enforcement officer, or committing murder during another serious felony.
Two categorical exemptions cut across every jurisdiction. Under Atkins v. Virginia (2002), executing a person with an intellectual disability violates the Eighth Amendment.3Justia. Atkins v Virginia, 536 US 304 And no one who was under eighteen at the time of the offense can be sentenced to death under state or federal law.
Federal and Military Death Row
The federal system operates on its own. The Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 sets out the current framework and covers dozens of offenses, including espionage, treason, and certain large-scale drug trafficking crimes that result in death.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3591 – Sentence of Death Federal death row inmates have historically been housed in the Special Confinement Unit at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Federal death row went through a major upheaval starting in late 2024. On December 23, 2024, President Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 federal inmates to life without the possibility of parole, effectively emptying most of federal death row.5U.S. Department of Justice. Commutations Granted by President Joseph Biden (2021-2025) Less than a month later, President Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office directing the Attorney General to pursue the death penalty aggressively, to evaluate whether the 37 commuted individuals could face new state-level capital charges, and to ensure they are held in conditions “consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes.” In February 2026, a federal judge blocked the administration’s attempt to transfer the commuted prisoners to a supermax facility, ruling the move exceeded executive authority over people whose sentences had already been legally changed.
The military maintains its own capital system under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which authorizes death for offenses including mutiny and certain wartime crimes.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 US Code 894 – Art 94 Mutiny or Sedition Four service members are currently held on military death row at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. No military execution has been carried out since 1961.
States With the Death Penalty on Hold
Having a death penalty statute is not the same as using it. Four states with active capital punishment laws have imposed executive holds that pause executions: California, Ohio, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. A moratorium is a governor’s decision to suspend executions without changing the underlying law. Death sentences remain in effect, inmates stay on death row, and appeals continue. The governor simply refuses to sign death warrants or allow the execution chamber to operate.
California’s moratorium, issued by Governor Newsom in 2019, is the most consequential by population. California holds more death row inmates than any other jurisdiction but has not executed anyone since 2006. Oregon went further in 2022, when the governor commuted every death sentence on the state’s death row to life without parole while keeping the moratorium in place. Pennsylvania’s hold has survived across two governors from different parties.
Moratoriums are fragile. Because they depend on the sitting governor, the next occupant of the office can rescind one on day one and resume signing death warrants without any new legislation. And because sentences are never vacated, death row populations can keep growing in these states even when no executions are taking place. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court unanimously upheld the governor’s authority to impose such a pause in 2015, but that ruling confirmed the power exists without making any particular moratorium permanent.
How Jury Rules Differ
Most states require a unanimous jury vote before imposing a death sentence, but not all. Florida requires only eight of twelve jurors to recommend death, and Alabama also permits non-unanimous jury recommendations. In Missouri and Indiana, a judge can impose a death sentence when the jury deadlocks during sentencing. The Supreme Court has never ruled on whether the Constitution requires jury unanimity at the penalty phase, leaving these variations in place.
Why So Many People Stay on Death Row for So Long
Death row populations are large relative to the number of executions carried out because the appeals process is long and constitutionally required. More than half of everyone currently on death row has been there for over eighteen years. Many die of natural causes before their appeals conclude.
Capital appeals move through three stages. The direct appeal is an automatic review by the state’s highest court, or by the federal appellate courts in federal cases, limited to errors that appear in the trial record. State post-conviction review then allows defendants to raise issues outside the trial record, such as ineffective assistance of trial counsel, juror misconduct, or newly discovered evidence. Federal habeas corpus is the final stage, available only after state remedies are exhausted, in which a federal district court reviews whether the state conviction or sentence violated the U.S. Constitution.
When federal courts deny relief and the Supreme Court declines to hear the case, executive clemency is the only remaining option. Clemency is a constitutional power held by the president for federal cases and by governors for state cases. It can take the form of a full pardon, a commutation to a lesser sentence, or a temporary reprieve. Because state and federal governments are separate legal systems, a presidential commutation applies only to federal convictions.
How Many People Are on Death Row Today
The death row population has been declining for years. At the end of 2022, 2,270 people were held under a sentence of death across 26 states and the federal system.7Bureau of Justice Statistics. Capital Punishment, 2022 – Statistical Tables By early 2025 the number was around 2,100, pushed down by commutations, natural deaths, and a low rate of new death sentences.
The population is heavily concentrated. California holds the largest death row, with over 600 inmates, despite not having executed anyone in nearly two decades. Florida and Texas hold the next largest populations.7Bureau of Justice Statistics. Capital Punishment, 2022 – Statistical Tables Those three states together account for more than half of everyone under a sentence of death nationally.
Executions surged in 2025 even as the overall population continued to shrink. Forty-seven people were executed across 11 states that year. Florida alone carried out 19 executions, up from just one the year before. New death sentences remain a fraction of what they were in the 1990s, so the recent activity reflects an aging backlog being cleared rather than any rise in capital sentencing.
How Executions Are Carried Out
Lethal injection remains the primary method in nearly every death penalty state, but the process has grown unstable over the past fifteen years. The trouble began in 2010 when the sole domestic manufacturer of sodium thiopental, one of the drugs in the standard three-drug protocol, stopped producing it. Pharmaceutical companies have since refused to sell their products for use in executions, creating chronic shortages.
States have improvised. Some switched to single-drug protocols using pentobarbital. Others adopted midazolam, a sedative the Supreme Court narrowly upheld as constitutional in Glossip v. Gross (2015) after inmates argued it carried an unacceptable risk of pain. Several states turned to compounding pharmacies, which operate with less regulatory oversight than standard drug manufacturers.
Alabama became the first jurisdiction in the world to execute someone using nitrogen hypoxia in January 2024. Witnesses reported that the prisoner appeared conscious for several minutes after the gas began flowing, and that he shook and writhed for roughly four minutes before losing consciousness. State attorneys had previously told courts the method would produce unconsciousness within seconds. Several states have since added nitrogen hypoxia, electrocution, firing squad, or lethal gas to their statutes as backup methods when lethal injection drugs are unavailable.