The use of the death penalty has risen sharply in the United States, with more executions in 2025 than any year since 2009. It is a cruel and unjust development.
In theory, the death penalty is reserved for “the worst of the worst.” In practice, it is very different. People who are executed for their crimes are disproportionately poor or intellectually disabled and often lacked good lawyers. They are also more likely to be sentenced to death if they have been convicted of killing a white person.
Anthony Boyd, who maintained his innocence until Alabama executed him last year at age 54, had an inexperienced court-appointed lawyer and was convicted on disputed eyewitness testimony. Charles Flores, 56, has spent 27 years on death row in Texas for a murder conviction based solely on unreliable testimony from a hypnotized witness. Robert Roberson, who has autism, remains on death row there despite having been convicted on now-debunked evidence that he had shaken his daughter to death.
Adding to the injustice, executions often go awry and become a grisly spectacle. As Alabama administered nitrous gas to kill Mr. Boyd, he violently thrashed and drew agonized breaths for 30 minutes.
The death penalty is a fraught subject because most people on death row are guilty of murder and deserve tough punishment. But a life sentence without parole is a tough punishment. And the death penalty is both unavoidably flawed and unworthy of a decent society. As long it exists, it will disproportionately spare criminals with more resources and be used against people who are poor, mentally disabled or otherwise vulnerable.
Much of the world has come to this same conclusion. The list of countries that have abolished or effectively ended the death penalty includes all of Western Europe, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Morocco, South Africa and Australia. By continuing to execute people regularly, the United States puts itself in the company of only about 20 countries, among them Afghanistan, China, Iran and North Korea.
Over the past year, the United States has become even more of an outlier among democracies because the states that still conduct executions have accelerated the pace. Many of these states have in recent years passed secrecy laws to hide the details of what they are doing. We urge Americans not to look away.
In the initial years of the 21st century, more Americans recognized the flaws with the death penalty, and its use fell sharply. Opponents highlighted a wave of DNA-related exonerations, including of more than 20 people who were cleared after having spent time on death row.
Botched executions played a role too. After death-penalty opponents pressured some pharmaceutical companies into stopping the sale of lethal-injection drugs, states resorted to less reliable workarounds that led to gruesome scenes in execution chambers. Many doctors refused to participate, and amateurs filled the gap, sometimes administering lethal drugs improperly and causing prolonged suffering. Those cases contributed to public discomfort.
Political leaders from both parties responded to the growing recognition of the death penalty’s barbaric and arbitrary nature. In 2003, George Ryan, then the Republican governor of Illinois, issued a blanket commutation to death row inmates, citing “a shameless record of convicting innocent people.” Democrats went further, all but abandoning the practice in states they governed. Virginia, which executed 65 people in the 1990s, abolished the death penalty in 2021. The federal government contributed to the slowdown, too. It executed nobody during George W. Bush’s second term and both of Barack Obama’s terms.
But popular support for the death penalty has never disappeared, despite the injustices. The last time that voters rejected it in a ballot referendum was in Oregon in 1964. Twenty states continued to put people to death in the 2010s.
The recent surge in executions has four main causes.
First, almost all states that have executed someone since 2012 have passed secrecy laws, allowing them to obscure the cruelty of executions. Indiana, for example, now blocks reporters from witnessing executions. Other laws allow states to hide the details of their shady efforts to buy lethal injection drugs. Consider that, in 2012, Idaho officials reportedly set up a meeting in a parking lot where they traded a suitcase of cash for lethal-injection drugs. The new laws try to minimize public backlash to wildly inappropriate practices.
Second, states have begun to seek alternatives for lethal injections, given the drugs’ cost and their unreliable supply. Last year, South Carolina executed three prisoners by firing squad. Yet this method, too, can go badly. In April, a firing squad’s bullets reportedly missed their intended target over the heart of Mikal Mahdi, and he cried out, groaned and gave labored breaths for more than a minute until his last gasp.
Third, today’s conservative Supreme Court is often indifferent to the horrors of the death penalty. From the 1980s through early 2000s, the court issued several decisions that effectively restricted its use, including bans on the death penalty for children and the intellectually disabled. Since 2020, with a more conservative majority, the court has gone in the other direction. The justices have made it harder for some defendants to introduce new evidence and have quickly, and often without explanation, rejected lower courts’ requests to pause executions. The court has prioritized expediency over justice and made it more likely that the government will kill innocent people.
Finally there is President Trump. He has been enthusiastic about the death penalty since he was a tabloid figure in the 1980s. Since entering politics a decade ago, he has suggested it was an appropriate punishment even for drug dealers. His support has led the Republican Party to embrace the practice again. Shortly after returning to office last year, he signed an executive order encouraging states to pursue capital charges.
Florida embodies the recent changes. Last year, it executed 19 people; the state’s previous high in the modern era had been eight, in 2014. Florida’s laws are unusual in giving the governor broad control over who on death row should be executed, and Gov. Ron DeSantis has used that authority. This year, he has already signed five death warrants.
Last year, Mr. DeSantis signed a law that mandates the death penalty for undocumented immigrants who commit capital crimes, despite its apparent violation of a 1987 Supreme Court ruling prohibiting automatic death sentences for any category of crime. What is the name of this new law? The TRUMP Act.
This editorial board has long argued for the abolition of the death penalty. It is a form of institutionalized vengeance that causes a society to mimic the behavior of its worst offenders. It does not deter crime more than life imprisonment, studies show. These are the reasons that so much of the world no longer executes people.
This week has brought a rare recent piece of good news in the United States. On Tuesday, Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama commuted the death sentence of Charles Burton, 75, who was involved in a 1991 robbery but was no longer on the scene when one of his accomplices shot and killed a man. He was set to be executed on Thursday. Ms. Ivey made the right decision, but it should not require a wave of media attention and public outcry to secure last-minute justice in every flawed case.
In the absence of abolition, this country should at least take steps to reduce the worst injustices of the death penalty. The chances that an innocent person will be executed remain far too high. People on death row should have every opportunity to present evidence that calls into question their conviction.
In its current term, the Supreme Court is hearing a case involving protections against executing intellectually disabled Americans, who are at greater risk of falsely confessing and often struggle to defend themselves in court. We hope the justices uphold those protections. We also believe that the court should continue to prevent states from imposing the death penalty for crimes other than murder, a ruling it made in 2008 and that Mr. DeSantis has challenged.
Finally, states should repeal their secrecy laws and allow the public to confront the grim reality of executions. That so many states would rather hide this truth offers one reason for hope during a dark new period of executions in the United States. Even many of the politicians who support the death penalty seem to grasp that it is indefensible.
Graphics by Taylor Maggiacomo.
Source photograph by dm3d, via Getty Images.
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