In her essay in Politico Magazine, USF School of Law Professor Lara Bazelon says the downward trend in death sentences that began after hitting a peak in the mid-1990s, “is beginning to reverse.” She notes that in 2021, there were 11 executions in the U.S. and one year later, in 2022, there were 18. In 2023, there were 24 people executed, the highest in five years.
The reason for the increase? According to Bazelon, it’s because of the conservative supermajority appointed to the Court by former President Trump. Trump appointees Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, in lockstep with John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, “are far more likely to propel an execution forward than intercede to stop it, including in cases where guilt is in doubt or where the means of carrying it out could result in a grotesque spectacle of pain and suffering.”
And “states are responding.” Bazelon points to Alabama’s plan to execute Kenneth Smith this week using nitrogen gas, a method that has never been tried before; South Carolina intends to restart executions after a 12-year pause, and Utah plans to bring back firing squads. Florida passed a bill last May that allows a person convicted of the rape of a minor to be sentenced to death, in defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008). (Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is betting the supermajority will overturn Kennedy. When he signed the bill, DeSantis issued a statement that he “is prepared to take this law all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule judicial precedents.”)
From the time Barrett joined the Court in 2020, “the Court has stopped an execution only twice and reversed a lower court to permit an execution nine times. In 2023, 26 condemned prisoners asked the Court to hear their cases; 25 were rejected. The message is clear: Prosecutors eager to seek and swiftly impose death sentences can reliably do so without judicial interference,” Bazelon writes.