Left: Texas Governor Greg Abbott speaks at a news conference after surveying tornado damage in Perryton, Texas, Saturday, June, 17, 2023.(AP Photo/David Erickson, File). Right: FILE – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gestures during a news conference, Jan. 26, 2023, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier, File)
Texas and Florida led the nation in carrying out death penalty sentences in 2023 and the number of executions increased from last year, even as a majority of Americans believe capital punishment is administered unfairly.
A total of 24 people were put to death in 2023, according to a year-end report from the Death Penalty Information Center. That’s an increase from the 18 people who were executed in 2022.
Florida and Texas accounted for more than half the total executions in the country, according to the report. Five states carried out the death sentence in 2023: Florida had six executions and Texas had eight, respectively, while Missouri and Oklahoma each put four people to death. Alabama held two executions.
As Law&Crime previously reported, new legislation in the Sunshine State under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis eliminates the unanimity requirement for jurors weighing the death penalty, enabling the imposition of a death sentence with approval from only eight of 12 jurors. That law passed after Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 people, narrowly avoided a death sentence when one juror refused to vote for capital punishment.
Overall, it was the ninth consecutive year where fewer than 30 people were executed and fewer than 50 people were sentenced to death, according to the DPIC — the lowest number of states that executed and imposed new death sentences in 20 years.
Seven states — Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Texas — issued death sentences in 2023. The federal government issued its first death sentence since 2019, following the conviction of Tree of Life synagogue shooter Robert Bowers, while the federal capital trial of Sayfullo Saipov, who carried out a terror attack using a rental truck in New York City, resulted in a life sentence.
In addition, more Americans believe the death penalty is administered unfairly than fairly, according to the report, citing the annual Gallup Crime Survey.
“For the first time, the October 2023 survey reports that more Americans believe the death penalty is applied unfairly (50%) than fairly (47%),” the DPIC report said. “Between 2000 and 2015, 51%-61% of Americans said they thought capital punishment was applied fairly in the U.S., but this number has been dropping since 2016. This year’s 47% represents a historic low in Gallup’s polling.”
The report says that most of the people executed in 2023 had “significant vulnerabilities” and likely would not have been sentenced to death if tried today, due to changes in laws as well as understanding of mental illness and trauma.
Nearly 80% of people executed “had at least one of the following impairments: serious mental illness; brain injury, developmental brain damage, or an IQ in the intellectually disabled range; and/or chronic serious childhood trauma, neglect, and/or abuse,” the report says.
The report also noted racial disparities in the use of capital punishment.
“As has been historically true, prisoners of color were overrepresented among those executed and cases with white victims were more likely to be executed,” the DPIC says. “Nine of the 24 prisoners executed were people of color. The vast majority of crimes for which defendants were executed this year (79%) involved white victims.”
The DPIC also notes that the majority of states — 29 — have either abolished the death penalty or have paused executions by executive action.
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