The mystery of Joe Biden’s views about capital punishment has finally been solved. His decision to grant clemency to 37 of the 40 people on federal death row shows the depth of his opposition to the death penalty. And his decision to leave three of America’s most notorious killers to be executed by a future administration shows the limits of his abolitionist commitment. The three men excluded from Biden’s mass clemency—Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Robert Bowers—would no doubt pose a severe test of anyone’s resolve to end the death penalty. Biden failed that test.
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USA: Death Penalty Use in 2015 Declines Sharply
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Use of and support for the death penalty continued its
steady decline in the United States in 2015
By all measures, use of and support for the death penalty continued its steady decline in the United States in 2015. The number of new death sentences imposed in the U.S. fell sharply from already historic lows, executions dropped to their lowest levels in 24 years, and public opinion polls revealed that a majority of Americans preferred life without parole to the death penalty. Opposition to capital punishment polled higher than any time since 1972.
The numbers also pointed to the increasing geographic isolation of the death penalty and its disproportionate overuse by a handful of jurisdictions. Fewer states and counties imposed death sentences, and 93% of executions were concentrated in just 4 states. 16% of all the new death sentences imposed in the country came from a single California county and — while nearly every state requires juries to unanimously agree to a death sentence — more than a quarter of the nation’s new death sentences were imposed by judges in two states after juries did not unanimously agree on death.
Nearly two-thirds of the new death sentences in the U.S. in 2015 were imposed in the same 2% of American counties that have disproportionately accounted for more than half of all U.S. death sentences in the past.
The national trend towards abolition of the death penalty in law or practice continued:
Nebraska legislatively abolished the death penalty; the Connecticut Supreme Court declared its death penalty unconstitutional; and Pennsylvania joined three other states in imposing gubernatorial moratoria on executions. For the first time in a generation, there were fewer than 3,000 men and women on death rows nationwide.
Six more men and women were exonerated from death row. And as two Justices of the Supreme Court issued an historic opinion inviting systemic constitutional challenges to the death penalty in America, numerous additional states put executions on hold because of problems in obtaining execution drugs or in administering their execution protocols.
NEW DEATH SENTENCES
New death sentences in the United States have fallen to historic lows. With less than two weeks remaining in 2015, and few cases pending, 14 states and the federal government have imposed 49 new death sentences. This was a 33% decline from the 73 death sentences imposed in 2014 — itself already a 40-year low.
The number of new death sentences imposed in the U.S. in 2015 was the fewest in any single year since 1973, when states began enacting new capital sentencing statutes in response to the Supreme Court’s 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia declaring all existing death penalty statutes unconstitutional. New death sentences were 84% below the 315 death sentences imposed during the peak death-sentencing year of 1996.
Even as the use of the death penalty declined, its most dangerous flaw remained apparent. Six death row prisoners were exonerated of all charges this year, one each in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas. Since 1973, a total of 156 inmates have been exonerated and freed from death row.
The number of people on death row dropped below 3,000 for the first time since 1995, according to the latest survey by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
At least 70 death row prisoners with execution dates in 2015 received stays, reprieves, or commutations, 2.5 times the number who were executed.
In addition, there is an ongoing risk that judicial review is inadequate to protect capital defendants with serious intellectual disabilities or crippling mental illness.
DPIC’s report states: “The death penalty is supposed to be reserved for the worst of the worst crimes and the worst of the worst offenders. However, … [t]wo-thirds of the 28 people executed in 2015 exhibited symptoms of severe mental illness, intellectual disability, the debilitating effects of extreme trauma and abuse, or some combination of the three.”
KEY FINDINGS OF THE REPORT
There were 28 executions in 6 states, the fewest since 1991.
There were 49 death sentences in 2015, 33% below the modern death penalty low set last year.
New death sentences in the past decade are lower than in the decade preceding the Supreme Court’s invalidation of capital punishment in 1972.
Six more former death row inmates were exonerated of all charges.
The mystery of Joe Biden’s views about capital punishment has finally been solved. His decision to grant clemency to 37 of the 40 people on federal death row shows the depth of his opposition to the death penalty. And his decision to leave three of America’s most notorious killers to be executed by a future administration shows the limits of his abolitionist commitment. The three men excluded from Biden’s mass clemency—Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Robert Bowers—would no doubt pose a severe test of anyone’s resolve to end the death penalty. Biden failed that test.
It’s December 18th, 2024. In the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, a guard approaches one of the 200 cells in Death Row and finds a prisoner inside, sitting on the edge of his bed. It’s 3 p.m. Kevin Ray Underwood has 24 hours left to live. Not every state in the US allows – or uses – the death penalty. The ones that do all have different execution protocols. But generally speaking, the timeline features similar events with slight differences in the details. These protocols can take months of preparation—all so that the day of execution is well… perfectly executed.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper commuted the death sentences of 15 men on his final day in office. All 15 will still serve life sentences without the possibility of parole. RALEIGH, N.C. — In one of his final acts in office, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper commuted the death sentences of 15 men convicted of murder to life in prison without parole on Tuesday, reducing the state's death row population by more than 10%.
PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona death row prisoner asked the state’s highest court to skip legal formalities and schedule his execution earlier than authorities were aiming for, pushing as he had in the past to have his death sentence carried out. Aaron Brian Gunches’ execution would mark a resumption of Arizona’s use of the death penalty after a two-year pause while it reviewed its procedures. In a handwritten court filing this week, Gunches asked the state Supreme Court to schedule his execution for mid-February for his murder conviction in the 2002 killing of Ted Price.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa has signed into law the Death Penalty Abolition Act. Zimbabwe currently has over 60 prisoners on death row who will now have their sentences commuted. The last execution in the country was nearly two decades ago in 2005. Parliament had pushed to amend the Criminal Law Code, Criminal Procedure Law and the Defence Act which allowed the death penalty in cases of murder committed under aggravating circumstances.
Iran executed three Afghan nationals on the first day of 2025 at Ghezel Hesar Prison in Karaj, according to two human rights watchdog organizations. Halvash reported that Iran executed two individuals from Afghanistan and one Baloch national in Bandar Abbas prison. They were executed without holding a last meeting with their families, the watchdog said. Another human rights watchdog, Henvaw, reported the execution of an Afghan national.
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE — Just days after Tennessee announced it had a new manual for executing death row inmates, the state's top prison officials said they aren't going to release the document to the public. The Tennessee Department of Correction had told The Associated Press to file a public records request to obtain a copy of the latest execution manual, known as a protocol. However, the agency this week denied the AP's request, saying it needs to keep the entire document secret to protect the identities of the executioner and other people involved.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina’s Supreme Court set a Jan. 31 date for the state’s next execution after allowing a pause for the Christmas holidays. The state is working through a backlog of inmates out of appeals but temporarily spared because prison officials couldn’t obtain drugs needed for lethal injection. Marion Bowman Jr., 44, was convicted of murder in the shooting of a friend whose burned body was found in the trunk of her car in Dorchester County in 2001.
62-year-old man drove his car into crowds, killing 35 people on Nov. 11 A Chinese court sentenced a 62-year-old man to death on Friday for a deadly car-ramming incident that killed 35 people and injured 43 others, according to state media. The Zhuhai Intermediate People's Court found Fan Weiqiu guilty of endangering public safety after he deliberately drove his car into crowds exercising outside a sports complex on Nov. 11, 2024 in southern China's Guangdong Province, Xinhua reported.
French diplomats have acknowledged that talks were underway for the transfer of the 61-year-old Frenchman arrested in 2005 at a drugs factory. JAKARTA: France has sent Indonesia an official request for the transfer of a French death row inmate who has spent nearly 20 years in prison, an Indonesian minister told AFP on Saturday. Indonesia has in recent weeks released half a dozen high-profile detainees, including a Filipina mum on death row and the last five members of the so-called “Bali Nine” drug ring.
