“Amnesty International’s monitoring shows that in 2023 the lowest number of countries on record carried out the highest number of known executions in close to a decade,” AI states in its annual report, “The Use of the Death Penalty in 2023.”
“These figures confirm trends of recent years that pointed to the ever-increasing isolation of retentionist countries.”
Global use of the death penalty in 2023 increased 31% from 2022. The numbers “are likely to be higher,” AI notes, however, because many countries, including China, Vietnam, Belarus, and North Korea, don’t disclose their execution figures. In fact, AI says it stopped publishing its estimated number of executions in China, “which remained the world’s lead executioner,” because of how China “misrepresented” its numbers, but noted that “available information indicates that each year thousands of people are executed and sentenced to death.”
Among the report’s findings:
- There were 1,153 recorded executions in 2023, an increase of 31% from the 883 state killings in 2022.
- This is the highest number recorded by AI since 2015 (1,634) and the first time the total has exceeded 1,000 since 2016 (1,032).
- The increase this year was primarily the result of a “spike” in executions in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, the U.S., and Yemen.
- Sixteen countries accounted for all of the executions, “the lowest number of executing countries on record.”
- The methods of execution in 2023 included beheading, hanging, lethal injection, and shooting.
In the U.S.:
- The total number of death sentences and executions was the highest since 2019 and 2018 but “reflected historically low trends.”
- The first federal death sentence since 2019 was imposed in 2023 (Robert Bowers for the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting).
- For the seventh consecutive year, the U.S. was one of only three countries in the Americas to impose new death sentences.
