U.S. Executions Nearly Doubled in 2025. Public Support Hit a 50-Year Low.

Executions nearly doubled in 2025, driven almost entirely by one state

Executions rose sharply from 25 in 2024 to 47 in 2025, according to the Death Penalty Information Center's year-end report, ending roughly a decade of historically low execution numbers and reaching the highest annual total in over 16 years. This surge was driven almost entirely by a single state: Florida alone carried out 19 executions in 2025, accounting for 40% of the national total by itself.

Ten military veterans were executed in 2025, seven of them in Florida, the highest number of veterans executed in nearly 20 years according to DPIC's analysis. All 47 executions in 2025 involved male defendants; the methods included lethal injection, nitrogen hypoxia, and firing squad, reflecting states' continued search for execution methods as lethal injection drugs have grown harder for states to source.

Meanwhile, the death row population and public support are both at multi-decade lows

Despite the 2025 execution surge, the actual death row population has declined for 24 consecutive years, down to approximately 2,004 inmates nationally, the lowest figure in over 32 years, according to Death Penalty Information Center data. This reflects a longer-term decline in new death sentences being imposed by juries, even as the pace of executions for existing death row inmates increased sharply in 2025.

Public opinion has moved in the same declining direction over a much longer timeframe. Gallup polling shows support for the death penalty for convicted murderers fell to 52% in 2025, a 50-year low, down from 76% in 1991. Opposition simultaneously reached its highest recorded level at 44%. This creates a genuine disconnect: today's executions are largely carrying out sentences imposed decades ago, when public support exceeded 70%, meaning the executions happening now reflect a very different public mood than the one that produced the original sentences.

Where the death penalty currently stands, state by state

• 27 states currently retain capital punishment as a legal sentencing option, though only 21 of those states have actually carried out an execution in recent years
• Ohio has maintained an unofficial moratorium since 2019, when then-Governor Mike DeWine halted executions over concerns the state's three-drug protocol may be unconstitutional; that moratorium remained in place as of 2025
• Texas has carried out more executions than any other state since 1976 (600 total), followed by Florida (134), Oklahoma (131), Virginia (113), and Missouri (102)
• The federal government has executed 16 people since 1976, 13 of them during a six-month span from July 2020 to January 2021, more executions in that single period than in the previous 56 years combined

A specific, less-discussed dimension: mental illness and childhood trauma

Documented serious mental illness, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, appears in numerous executed individuals' case histories, yet the Supreme Court has not categorically barred execution of people with serious mental illness (as distinct from intellectual disability, which the Court has separately restricted). Severe childhood trauma, including documented physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect, is described as nearly universal among death row populations in research compiled from Department of Justice data, but juries focused on the specifics of the crime itself often don't weigh this history heavily in sentencing, according to this research.

The core disagreement

Supporters of capital punishment generally argue it provides appropriate retribution for the most severe crimes and can serve as a deterrent, and that the legal process, extensive appeals, and executive clemency review already provide substantial safeguards against wrongful execution. Opponents generally cite the documented mental illness and trauma histories common among death row populations, the cost and length of the appeals process itself, and continued innocence claims as reasons capital punishment is applied inconsistently and irreversibly. The genuine, less-discussed empirical question beneath the debate is the widening gap between falling public support and the recent surge in executions, both sides can point to real data supporting their read of where the country's mood actually stands, since declining new death sentences and declining overall support coexist with the sharpest single-year execution increase in over a decade.