United States
Death penalty and prisoners' rights · Archive since 1999
Data card
- Legal status
- Retentionist
- Executions recorded in 2026
- 16
- Executions recorded in 2025
- 47
- First news item in the archive
- JANUARY 1, 1999 · The pace of USA executions is on the rise, pushed by...
- News items in the archive
- 1,550
Source: Hands Off Cain database, updated to 2026.
United States is classified as Retentionist in the Hands Off Cain database, updated to 2026. In 2026 the association recorded 16 executions in the country, against 47 the year before. The archive holds 1,550 news items on United States, from 1999 to today.
In the United States the death penalty is a matter for the individual states as well as the federal government: some have abolished it, some retain it without applying it, and some carry out executions regularly. The prevailing method is lethal injection, and several states have reintroduced alternative methods.
Its death rows are among the most populated in the world and the wait often lasts decades. The debate concerns the availability of the drugs, wrongful convictions and the conditions of isolation. The archive follows executions, stays, commutations and court decisions, state by state.
Latest news
NOVEMBER 14, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - Gallup poll: 55% Support Death Penalty, 42% against, 3% abstentions.
- OCTOBER 23, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTY
USA - Sept. 11 Case Awaits Biden Administration’s Reply on Plea Deal
At Guantánamo Bay
OCTOBER 12, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - Oklahoma. Federal Bureau of Prisons denies transfer of John Fitzgerald Hanson
SEPTEMBER 30, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - Report: Black People 7.5 Times More Likely to Be Wrongfully Convicted of Murder than Whites
SEPTEMBER 2, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - Death Row USA Spring 2022
2,414 people on US death row, but "only" 1385 at "real risk of execution"
JULY 1, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - 2022 DPIC Mid-Year Review
7 new death sentences and 7 executions so far
JUNE 30, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - Ketanji Brown Jackson has been sworn in
First Black Woman to Serve as a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
JUNE 27, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - Biden must take action on promise to end federal death penalty
- JUNE 16, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTY
USA - Percentage Who View the Death Penalty as Morally Acceptable Remains Near Record Low
Galluo poll
- APRIL 26, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTY
USA - Joe Biden grants clemency to 78 people
But no federal death row inmates
APRIL 11, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - Senate Confirms Ketanji Brown Jackson
First African-American Woman to Serve on U.S. Supreme Court
MARCH 29, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - President Biden Signs Law Making Lynching a Federal Crime
MARCH 15, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - Minitary. Sept. 11 Prosecutors Are in Plea Talks
Guilty plea in exchange for life sentences
MARCH 14, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - The latest edition of "Death Row USA" Drusa has been published
State Death Rows Drop Below 2,400 For First Time Since 1990
MARCH 6, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - Feds appeal reversal in Alfonso Rodriguez death penalty case
MARCH 4, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - Supreme Court upholds death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
- FEBRUARY 25, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTY
USA - Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson Nominated to U.S. Supreme Court
FEBRUARY 23, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - Poll Finds Bipartisan Opposition to Use of the Death Penalty as It is Actually Administered
FEBRUARY 15, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - Department of Justice Rejects Use of Evidence Obtained by Torture in Guantánamo Case
FEBRUARY 9, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA -Published "Death Row USA" updated to October 1, 2021
2,455 people on death row
JANUARY 27, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - Capital Punishment, 2020 Statistics
Death Row Below 2,500 First Time in 29 Years
- JANUARY 9, 2022United StatesDEATH PENALTY
USA - Guantánamo Bay, 20 years on
DECEMBER 31, 2021United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - Death Penalty Information Center: Year End Report 2021
Virginia abolishes, 11 executions, 19 new death sentences
- DECEMBER 29, 2021United StatesDEATH PENALTY
USA - Published the latest edition of "Death Row USA" updated to July 1, 2021
Fewest Death-Sentenced Prisoners in Three Decades
DECEMBER 20, 2021United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - 2021 Year End Report from the Death Penalty Information Center
11 executions and 18 new death sentences in 1 year
DECEMBER 18, 2021United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - 2021 Gallup Poll: Public Support for Capital Punishment Remains at Half-Century Low
OCTOBER 28, 2021United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - Published the latest edition of Death Row Usa
Updated to April 1, 2021
OCTOBER 21, 2021United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - Azibo Aquart sentenced to life in prison
Death sentence overturned in 2018
SEPTEMBER 22, 2021United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - In the Extreme: Women Serving Life Without Parole and Death Sentences
A report by the Alice Project
SEPTEMBER 22, 2021United StatesDEATH PENALTYUSA - Homicides increased by 29% in 2020, the year of Covid, but also of Black Lives Matter.
2021 still increasing