With around twenty executions per year and an equivalent number of death sentences, capital punishment continues its slow decline in the United States but remains supported by a majority of Americans.
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In 2023, 24 executions took place in the United States and a similar number are planned for 2024, while 21 death sentences were handed down, statistics comparable to those of previous years.
In its annual report published in December, the specialized observatory Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) observes that, for the 9th consecutive year, fewer than 30 people were executed and fewer than 50 sentenced to death in the country, with a geographic concentration blatant.
All of these executions, all by lethal injection, took place in five states: three in the South — Texas, Florida, and Alabama — and two in the center of the country, Missouri and Oklahoma.
The first execution scheduled for 2024, that of Kenneth Eugene Smith in Alabama, between Thursday and Friday, must however be carried out by nitrogen inhalation, a world first denounced by the UN which is concerned about a possible form of ” torture”.
The 21 death sentences handed down in 2023 are evenly distributed among just seven states: Florida, California, Texas, Alabama, Arizona, North Carolina and Louisiana.
As in previous years, most prisoners executed in 2023 “would probably not be sentenced to death today”, due in particular to the consideration of the mental health problems and trauma of the defendants or to legislative changes in pronouncing the sentence. capital, explains the DPIC.
Thus, 79% of people executed last year suffered from at least serious mental illness, brain injury or intellectual disability and/or severe childhood trauma, “33% of all three” categories, according to the report.
The DPIC sees in the continued decline in the number of capital punishment sentences over the past twenty years “a strong indication that the opinions of juries regarding the effectiveness, precision and morality of the death penalty have exchange”.
According to a recent poll by the Gallup Institute, a majority of Americans (50% versus 47%) believe that capital punishment is not fairly applied in the United States, a first since the launch of this survey in 2000.
A majority (53%) nevertheless remains in favor of the death penalty, according to the same source.
Capital punishment has been abolished in 23 American states, while six others observe a moratorium on its application by decision of the governor.
More than 2,300 prisoners are currently on death row, more than a quarter of them in California, where the last execution took place in 2006.
