Notable new data on death sentences over first half of 2025

In recent posts about recent exections, I have noted that the US as a whole is on pace for more executions in 2025 than in any year in more than a decade.  Against that backdrop, I was interested to see that the Death Penalty Information Center released this new short report titled “Mid-Year Review 2025: New Death Sentences Remain Low Amidst Increase in Executions.”  The report covers a lot of ground on death penalty developments in 2025, and here is part of its discussion of executions and death sentences:  

The 25 exe­cu­tions car­ried out in the first six months of 2025 equal the total num­ber of exe­cu­tions for all of 2024. But this year’s exe­cu­tions are heav­i­ly geo­graph­i­cal­ly con­cen­trat­ed: 7 (28%) in Florida and 4 each (16%) in Texas and South Carolina, for a total of 60% of exe­cu­tions in just three states.  People exe­cut­ed this year spent an aver­age of 24 years on death row, con­firm­ing once again that exe­cu­tions are a lag­ging indi­ca­tor of pub­lic sup­port; they were sen­tenced at a time when sup­port for the death penal­ty was much high­er than it is today and more zeal­ous pros­e­cu­tion poli­cies were in place.  Public sup­port for the death penal­ty, last mea­sured in November 2024, is the low­est in 50 years (53%).

New death sen­tences are down near­ly 30% com­pared to the same peri­od last year.  Ten peo­ple in six states have been sen­tenced to death so far in 2025, mark­ing a decrease from last year’s pace of 14 new death sen­tences in the first half of 2024.  These new death sen­tences reflect the deci­sions of today’s juries and are a cur­rent mea­sure of pub­lic sen­ti­ment on the death penal­ty.  Both of Alabama’s new death sen­tences result­ed from non-unan­i­mous jury votes, with only 10 jurors vot­ing for death. Alabama and Florida are the only two states that allow non-unan­i­mous juries to impose sen­tences of death.

President Trump’s January 20, 2025, Executive Order urged state pros­e­cu­tors to seek new death sen­tences for the 37 men whose fed­er­al death sen­tences were com­mut­ed to life with­out parole by President Biden.  But only one per­son, Thomas Steven Sanders in Louisiana, faces new state cap­i­tal charges. Florida pros­e­cu­tors have also announced that they will reopen the case of Daniel Troya and Ricardo Sanchez, Jr., with the pos­si­bil­i­ty that they will seek new death sen­tences for the two men.  But oth­er state pros­e­cu­tors have declined President Trump’s invi­ta­tion, cit­ing high costs and logis­ti­cal com­pli­ca­tions.