The United States carried out 47 executions in 2025, nearly double the 25 executions in 2024 and the highest single-year total since 2010.1Death Penalty Information Center. The Death Penalty in 2025 For most of the past decade, the number of death penalty executions per year in the U.S. held below 30. The 2025 jump broke that pattern, and 14 more executions have already been carried out through mid-2026.2Death Penalty Information Center. Execution List 2026
Executions by Year, 2023 Through 2026
In 2023, five states executed a combined 24 people, all men. The Bureau of Justice Statistics recorded the racial breakdown as 15 white, 6 Black, and 3 Hispanic. Texas and Florida together accounted for 14 of the 24, or roughly 58%.3Bureau of Justice Statistics. Capital Punishment, 2023 – Statistical Tables Those executed had waited an average of 23 years between sentencing and execution, the longest average since executions resumed in 1976.4Death Penalty Information Center. The Death Penalty in 2023 Year End Report
In 2024, the figure barely moved: 25 executions across nine states, the tenth consecutive year under 30. Courts imposed 26 new death sentences that year.5Death Penalty Information Center. The Death Penalty in 2024 The average time between sentencing and execution held near 22 years.6Death Penalty Information Center. The Death Penalty in 2024 – Executions
Then 2025 changed the picture. Eleven states executed 47 people, with Florida alone responsible for 19, about 40% of the national total. New death sentences that same year fell to 23, widening the gap between how many people are being sentenced to death and how many sentences are actually carried out.1Death Penalty Information Center. The Death Penalty in 2025
Through the first part of 2026, 14 executions have been completed in Florida, Arizona, Texas, and Oklahoma.2Death Penalty Information Center. Execution List 2026 Whether the full-year pace matches 2025 is not yet clear, but it is already running well ahead of 2024.
The Long Trend Since 1976
Executions in the modern era resumed after the Supreme Court’s 1976 decision in Gregg v. Georgia, which upheld the death penalty so long as states used a structured sentencing process.7Justia. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 Only a handful of executions took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The annual count climbed through the 1990s as more states rewrote their capital sentencing laws, peaking at 98 in 1999, the highest since 1951.8Bureau of Justice Statistics. Capital Punishment, 1999
From that peak, the decline was long and steady. Totals dropped through the 2000s, fell below 50 by 2009, and stayed under 30 every year from 2015 through 2024. An October 2025 Gallup poll put public support for the death penalty at 52%, a five-decade low.9Death Penalty Information Center. The Death Penalty in 2025 – Public Opinion Even so, the 2025 spike shows the annual number is not a straight reflection of public opinion. It tracks which states have cases moving through the pipeline and how aggressively governors and attorneys general pursue execution dates.
Which States Do the Executing
A handful of states account for most executions in any given year. Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Alabama recur at the top of the list, and in 2023 those five were the only states to carry out any executions.3Bureau of Justice Statistics. Capital Punishment, 2023 – Statistical Tables By 2025 the roster of active states grew to 11, but the concentration held: Florida’s 19 executions made up 40% of the national total on their own.1Death Penalty Information Center. The Death Penalty in 2025
Texas has historically led by a wide margin, but what drives the annual number is not simply whether a state has capital punishment on the books. It is whether the state is actively moving cases toward execution dates. Florida’s 2025 surge is the clearest example: the law had not changed, but the pace did.
Twenty-three states plus the District of Columbia have abolished the death penalty entirely. Four more states technically retain it but have executive holds in place preventing any executions: California, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Ohio.10Death Penalty Information Center. State by State A hold means the sitting governor will not allow executions during their administration, but the statute stays in force and a future governor could lift it. The upshot is that the national count really reflects the caseloads of roughly a dozen active states, not the country as a whole.
Where Federal Executions Fit In
The federal government has its own death penalty, authorized under 18 U.S.C. ยง 3591 for crimes including espionage, treason, and certain murders committed during federal offenses or large-scale drug trafficking. No one under 18 at the time of the offense can receive a federal death sentence.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S.C. 3591 – Sentence of Death
In most years, federal executions contribute zero to the national count. The main exception in the modern era came in 2020 and early 2021, when the federal government executed 13 people in roughly six months.12Death Penalty Information Center. List of Defendants Executed in 2020 A January 2025 executive order directed the Justice Department to pursue the death penalty more aggressively in federal cases.13The White House. Restoring The Death Penalty And Protecting Public Safety Whether that produces federal executions in 2026 or later is not yet known, since these cases still have to clear the same appeals.
Why the Annual Number Is Smaller Than Death Row
Far more people are sentenced to death each year than are executed, and the death row population dwarfs any single year’s count. At the start of 2025, about 2,092 people were on death rows across 26 states and the federal system.3Bureau of Justice Statistics. Capital Punishment, 2023 – Statistical Tables The reason for the gap is the appeals process. People executed in 2024 had spent an average of 22.2 years on death row since sentencing.6Death Penalty Information Center. The Death Penalty in 2024 – Executions During that stretch, many people have their convictions overturned, their sentences reduced to life, or they die of natural causes before an execution date is set.
Clemency almost never closes that gap. Out of nearly 10,000 people sentenced to death since 1972, only 86 have had their sentences commuted by a governor, and 11 death penalty states have never granted an individual clemency in the modern era.14Death Penalty Information Center. Facts About the Death Penalty – The Rarity of Clemency Grants The annual execution total is the visible slice of a long, slow pipeline, and shifts in that total usually reflect state-level decisions to move cases forward rather than any sudden change in how often people are being sentenced to die.