Given the recent spate of executions, it may surprise you to learn that the increase is a false indicator of the state of the death penalty in America. Most of those executions took place many years, in some cases decades, after the individual had been convicted. These executions actually represent the past more than the present as a remnant of our nation’s former affinity for capital punishment.
A more accurate barometer of America’s death penalty today is the actions taken by those our society asks to render verdicts in capital punishment trials – jurors, ordinary citizens responsible for deciding if someone will be sentenced to die for their crimes.
In recent years, new death sentences have reached near-record lows with juries more and more opting for life instead of death. Nationwide in 2024, there were 26 new death sentences, compared to more than 300 per year in the mid-1990s.
So, despite the number of recent executions, the record shows that capital punishment is losing its grip on America and nothing underscores this fact better than the trends in historically conservative states.
In Oklahoma, it has been three years since a jury has issued a new death sentence. In Arkansas, it has been six years. In Kansas, it is nine years. And in Indiana, it has been more than a decade without a jury rendering a verdict of death.
This drought in new death sentences would have been unimaginable three decades ago. So, what is going on?
The overall decline in public support in America for the death penalty accounts for some of the drop in new death sentences, with support for the use of capital punishment reaching a five-decade low in 2024 at 53%, according to Gallop.
Changes in sentencing laws, such as the availability of life sentences, have also contributed to the drop in new death sentences. It has given juries an option other than death to ensure that convicted murderers do not return to society.
Prosecutors across the nation are also pursuing death sentences less often than in the past due to a variety of factors, such as the exorbitant trial costs, which are significantly higher than other murder cases.
Finally, today’s jurors also live in a 24/7 news cycle that could better inform them – as citizens in advance of becoming jurors – about the failures of the death penalty than their predecessors, such as the fact that juries in America have wrongly sentenced at least 200 people to death since 1976.
Innocence is a major issue for pro-life conservatives like me, which may help to explain some of the shift away from juries issuing death sentences in some of the reddest of states.
For a variety of reasons, American juries are sending the clearest signal that the use of capital punishment is waning in our country. So, do not be fooled by headlines about the latest execution somewhere, the evidence is abundantly clear through the decisions of jurors nationwide that the death penalty in America is losing legitimacy, and that in the not too distant future, it may end.
