At least 1,666 people have died from the death penalty in the United States since the Supreme Court cleared the way for executions to resume in 1976.1Death Penalty Information Center. Executions Overview The count covers every state and federal execution carried out under the modern statutes, and it climbs by a few dozen most years. Around 2,100 people remain on death row, and twenty-three states have abolished capital punishment entirely.2Death Penalty Information Center. Death Row Overview
How the Total Built Up Year by Year
The modern count begins with Gregg v. Georgia, the 1976 decision that allowed states to resume executions under revised sentencing procedures.3Justia. Gregg v Georgia, 428 US 153 (1976) Four years earlier, Furman v. Georgia had halted every execution in the country by finding that the death penalty as then applied violated the Eighth Amendment.4Justia. Furman v Georgia, 408 US 238 (1972) Thirty-five states rewrote their statutes to add structured sentencing, and Gregg found those revisions constitutional.5Constitution Annotated. Gregg v Georgia and Limits on Death Penalty
Executions ticked upward through the 1980s and then surged in the 1990s. In 1999, twenty states executed 98 people, the highest single-year total since 1951.6Bureau of Justice Statistics. Capital Punishment, 1999 After that peak the number fell steadily. The country carried out 25 executions in 2024. In 2025 the total rose to 47, partly driven by a cluster of nitrogen-gas executions in Alabama, though the overall pace remains far below the late 1990s.7Death Penalty Information Center. The Death Penalty in 2025
Which States Account for Most Executions
The 1,666 total is spread unevenly across the map. A handful of states account for the bulk of it, and several states with active capital statutes have rarely or never used them.
Texas leads by a wide margin. In May 2026 the state carried out its 600th execution since 1976, more than the next four states combined.8Death Penalty Information Center. State Execution Rates Florida follows with 131, Oklahoma with 127, and Virginia (before its 2021 abolition) with 113.9Death Penalty Information Center. State by State On a per-capita basis, Oklahoma leads the country.
Federal executions add only a small share to the national count. The Federal Death Penalty Act, codified at 18 U.S.C. §§ 3591–3599, authorizes death sentences for crimes such as treason and large-scale drug-trafficking offenses resulting in death.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3591 – Sentence of Death No federal executions took place between 2003 and 2020, but thirteen were carried out in roughly six months between July 2020 and January 2021. Only about 16 federal executions have occurred under the modern statute.11Federal Bureau of Prisons. Federal Executions
Who Has Been Executed
The racial breakdown of the 1,666 tracks at roughly 55 percent white, 34 percent Black, and 8 percent Hispanic, with other groups making up the remainder.12Death Penalty Information Center. Executions by Race and Race of Victim Black Americans make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population but account for more than a third of executions.
The disparity is sharper when you look at the victim’s race. A U.S. General Accounting Office review found that in 82 percent of the studies examined, the race of the victim significantly influenced whether a death sentence was imposed. In Florida, the odds of a death sentence were nearly five times higher in cases with white victims than in otherwise similar cases with Black victims.13Death Penalty Information Center. The Death Penalty in Black and White – Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides
Gender is even more lopsided. Only 18 women have been executed since 1976, a fraction of one percent of the total.14Death Penalty Information Center. Executions of Women
How Those Executions Were Carried Out
Five methods account for the 1,666 deaths, and one dominates. Lethal injection has been used 1,470 times. Electrocution is a distant second at 163. Lethal gas has been used 19 times, the firing squad 6 times, and nitrogen hypoxia 8 times.15Death Penalty Information Center. Methods of Execution
Nitrogen hypoxia is the newest method. Alabama carried out the first nitrogen-gas execution in January 2024, and by mid-2026 eight had been performed across Alabama and Louisiana. Courts in two federal circuits have upheld the method, while several Supreme Court justices have dissented from orders allowing nitrogen executions to proceed, citing Eighth Amendment concerns. Five states have authorized it, and two have used it so far.
Lethal injection remains contested despite its dominance. Pharmaceutical companies have restricted the sale of drugs used in execution protocols, pushing some states toward compounding pharmacies or alternative combinations. Those substitutions have produced prolonged executions and fresh rounds of litigation, and even states with active death warrants sometimes face long delays because they cannot secure the drugs.
Executions Compared With Death Row Exonerations
The 1,666 figure sits alongside another number worth stating plainly. Since 1973, at least 202 people sentenced to death in the United States have been fully exonerated of all charges related to their wrongful convictions.16Death Penalty Information Center. Innocence That works out to roughly one exoneration for every eight people executed.
These exonerations rarely come quickly. Half have taken more than a decade, and more than half of the exonerations since 2013 took 25 years or more. Some of the people freed in recent years had been on death row for over 30 years before evidence of their innocence surfaced.17Death Penalty Information Center. Time on Death Row
How U.S. Totals Compare Globally
The United States is one of a shrinking number of countries that still carry out executions, and it is not near the top of the global list. Amnesty International recorded at least 1,518 known executions worldwide in 2024, up from 1,153 in 2023.18Amnesty International. Amnesty International Global Report – Death Sentences and Executions 2024 Those figures exclude China, which executes more people than every other country combined but treats the data as a state secret.
Iran consistently leads the known count, recording at least 853 executions in 2023 alone. Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Iraq round out the top tier. With 25 executions in 2024 and 47 in 2025, the United States falls well behind those totals but remains the only Western democracy that actively practices capital punishment.19Death Penalty Information Center. Executions Around the World