Florida’s eight executions, combined with its plans to kill Edward Zakrzewski at the end of this month, and Kayle Bates in mid-August, means that the U.S. will mark its deadliest year of execution since 2015, when there were also 28, according to the Death Penalty Information Center https://tinyurl.com/2uv3chdm That number is likely to go even higher, however, since nine more executions are scheduled in six states — Alabama (2), Indiana (1), Missouri (1), Tennessee (2), Texas (2), and Utah (1) — through December, according to DPIC.
However, DPIC Executive Director Robin M. Maher points out that “One year is just a single data point, which is why long-term trends are more meaningful when evaluating trends. This year will undoubtedly end with more executions than we have seen in a decade, but the long-term trend is still decidedly away from use of the death penalty.” In DPIC’s mid-year report https://tinyurl.com/mspr5kpb, released this month, it found that “People executed this year spent an average of 24 years on death row, confirming once again that executions are a lagging indicator of public support; they were sentenced at a time when support for the death penalty was much higher than it is today and more zealous prosecution policies were in place.”
Maher also notes that “New death sentences also remain low, which tells us that juries remain skeptical of the death penalty. And public support for the death penalty is at a five-decade low.”
And Death Penalty Policy Project Director Robert Dunham similarly maintains that “the sky is not falling” and notes the low number of new death sentences https://dppolicy.substack.com/p/dp3-analysis-us-death-row-experiences . As for the increased number of executions, he says, “the stacking of the Supreme Court, which has emboldened and empowered states to flout the law, is the main driver of the rise in executions” and the decrease in the number of stays of execution (three times less frequent than in the previous nine years).
“The loss of the federal courts as a backstop against unlawful executions is both driving up the number of executions and emboldening states to engage in unlawful conduct that likely would have been stopped if the Senate had not sabotaged President Obama’s appointment of Justice Scalia’s successor and Justices Ginsburg and Kennedy were still on the Court,” Dunham says.