The Dying Death Penalty

More and more Americans recognize that the death penalty is an ineffective, wasteful, unfair system that preys upon the vulnerable, risks executing the innocent, and harms families of murder victims. They see that the system is a failure. 

For decades, states have wasted countless taxpayer dollars maintaining a death penalty system riddled with problems and inequities while also spending money trying to fix those things. The only solution is repealing the death penalty and investing the millions saved into policies that promote healing for victims’ families and prevent future violence.

Eleven states have repealed the death penalty since 2007

• New York and New Jersey ended the death penalty in 2007. New Mexico did the same in 2009. Illinois repealed in 2011, Connecticut in 2012, Maryland in 2013, Delaware in 2016, Washington in 2018, New Hampshire in 2019, Colorado in 2020, and Virginia in 2021, bringing the total to 23 states without the death penalty.

More states are poised to follow suit or have suspended executions

• Governors across the country continue to halt executions and call into question the entire death penalty system:
  • California’s governor said, “Our death penalty system has been — by any measure — a failure,” when he signed a moratorium in March 2019.
  • Oregon’s governor referred to the death penalty as “an expensive and unworkable system that fails to meet basic standards of justice.” The subsequent governor kept executions on hold, recognizing the need to have a “broad discussion” around keeping or disposing of the death penalty.
  • Pennsylvania, with one of the country’s largest death rows, has executions on hold after the governor fulfilled a campaign promise to impose a moratorium, calling the death penalty “ineffective, unjust and expensive.”
• Eight other states haven't carried out an execution in more than 10 years.
• Republican lawmakers and red states are taking the lead on death penalty repeal in recent years:
  • Wyoming passed a repeal in the House and came within four votes in the Senate in 2020 and 2019.
  • Utah passed repeal legislation through the Senate and a House committee in 2016.
  • Montana’s Republican-led House came within one vote for repealing the death penalty in 2015.

Death sentences and executions have plummeted nationwide

• Death sentences dropped by more than 89% since their peak in 1996.¹
• All of 2019's executions took place in just seven states. More than 40% occurred in Texas.²
• In 2020, executions fell to a historic low of 17 in large part because of the coronavirus pandemic. The federal government, resuming executions after a 17-year hiatus, killed 10 people over six months.³
• Of the 3,143 county or county equivalents in the United States, only 16—or one half of one percent—imposed five or more death sentences between 2010 and 2015.⁴

A tipping point on the death penalty

• Support for the death penalty has dropped over 20 points over the last two decades, according to national polls by Gallup⁵ and Pew Research.⁶ For the first time, a majority of Americans say that life imprisonment with no possibility of parole is a better punishment for murder than the death penalty, according Gallup's most recent poll.⁷
• Even people who are invoked to justify the death penalty are speaking out against it:
  • Hundreds of families of murder victims across the country have called on lawmakers to end the death penalty because of its long and uncertain process, which diverts millions of dollars from services they need to rebuild their lives.⁸
  • A majority of police chiefs say the death penalty is not an important public safety tool.⁹
• Conservatives have banded together to shatter the myth that conservatives automatically support the death penalty. Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, a project of EJUSA, launched in 2013 and has since attracted hundreds of supporters, branches in 14 states, more than 4,000 media stories, and endorsements from such prominent figures as Richard Viguerie, Jay Sekulow, and Ron Paul.¹⁰

People from across the political spectrum and from every strata of society are frustrated with the death penalty’s inherent flaws. More and more are ready for repeal. Are you? Join the movement at ejusa.org.