US Reaches Executions Milestone Amid Declining Support for Death Penalty

The United States is set to reach a new milestone for executions this week, despite support declining nationwide for the death penalty.
Inmates in five states were scheduled to be put to death over a week, an unusually high number of executions. Freddie Owens was put to death with a lethal injection in South Carolina on Friday; Marcellus Williams in Missouri and Travis Mills died in Texas on Tuesday; and Alan Miller in Alabama and Emmanuel Littlejohn in Oklahoma are scheduled to die Thursday.
If the final two go ahead, the U.S will have reached 1,600 executions since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, according to data from nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.
“All the data indicates that the American public is increasingly uncomfortable with use of the death penalty, yet elected officials persist in scheduling secretive, costly executions that do not reflect accurately the priorities of the communities they serve,” Robin Maher, the DPIC’s executive director, said in a statement to Newsweek.
“It shows a clear disconnect between the agendas of elected officials and the reality that Americans are turning away from the death penalty.”
Most Americans still support the death penalty for murderers, with proponents often arguing such executions bring closure for the families of victims.
However, polling suggests that support has been falling over the last two decades.
The latest Gallup poll suggested 53 percent of Americans now support the death penalty, down from 80 percent in 1994.
Gallup says it interviews a minimum of 1,000 U.S. adults aged 18 and older for its surveys designed to monitor views on social, economic and political topics, contacting respondents via their landline and cellphone numbers.
Maher pointed to a Gallup survey from November 2023 that suggested the number of Americans who believe the death penalty is applied unfairly has increased to 50 percent—the highest since Gallup began asking in 2000.
Executions reached historic highs in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but have steadily declined in the years since.
Twenty nine states, Washington, D.C. and the federal government, have either abolished the death penalty or paused executions, according to DPIC.
Most executions are now carried out by Southern states. Eight states to carry them out this year are: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.
“Far too many Alabama families have waited for far too long—often for decades—to obtain justice for the loss of a loved one and to obtain closure for themselves,” Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said in a letter announcing the state was resuming executions last year, after ordering an interview following a series of failed lethal injections.
Yet the number of people exonerated and released from death row since 1973 reached 200 in July with the exoneration of Larry Roberts. One person on death row has been exerted for every eight that have been executed, according to the Equal Justice Initiative.
Racial bias is also persistent in the application of capital punishment, according to the DPIC, with Black people overrepresented on death rows. Six of the 16 people already put to death this year were Black, while two were Latino and one was Native American.
Alabama on Thursday is set to carry out the nation’s second execution ever using nitrogen gas, with Alan Miller set to die in a process that forces inmates to breathe pure nitrogen, meaning they are deprived of oxygen and die.
The state carried out the first nitrogen gas execution in January, putting Kenneth Smith to death in an execution that Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall described as “textbook.” But critics called it cruel and akin to human experimentation.
Also on Thursday, Emmanuel Littlejohn is set to die by lethal injection in Oklahoma for his role in the shooting death of a convenience store owner during a robbery in 1992. Littlejohn admitted to his role in the robbery, but said his accomplice was the one who pulled the trigger.
Last month, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 to recommend Gov. Kevin Stitt spare Littlejohn’s life, but the governor has not announced his decision. Stitt has only once granted clemency to an inmate when he commuted Julius Jones’ sentence just hours before he was set to be executed in 2021.