With around twenty executions per year and a corresponding number of death sentences, the death penalty in the United States continues to slowly decline, but continues to be supported by the majority of Americans.
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In 2023, 24 executions took place in the United States and a similar number is planned for 2024, while 21 death sentences were imposed, a statistic comparable to previous years.
In its annual report published in December, the specialized observatory Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) noted that for the ninth year in a row, fewer than 30 people were executed and fewer than 50 were sentenced to death in the country, with the geographical concentration obvious.
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.
However, the first execution scheduled for 2024, that of Kenneth Eugene Smith in Alabama, between Thursday and Friday, will have to be carried out by nitrogen inhalation, a world first denounced by the United Nations, which is concerned about a possible form of “torture”.
The 21 death sentences imposed in 2023 are evenly distributed across just seven states: Florida, California, Texas, Alabama, Arizona, North Carolina and Louisiana.
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As in previous years, most prisoners executed in 2023 “are unlikely to be sentenced to death today,” particularly due to consideration of defendants' mental health issues and trauma or changes in the law when sentencing. Capital, explains the DPIC.
According to the report, 79% of people executed last year suffered from at least one serious mental illness, brain injury or intellectual disability and/or severe childhood trauma, “33% of all three” categories.
The DPIC sees the continued decline in the number of capital punishments over the past twenty years as “strong evidence that juries are changing their minds about the effectiveness, precision and morality of the death penalty.”
According to a recent Gallup Institute poll, a majority of Americans (50% vs. 47%) believe the death penalty is not used fairly in the United States, a first since this poll began in 2000.
However, according to the same source, a majority (53%) support the death penalty.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 US states, while six other states have a moratorium on its use by governor's order.
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.