The US is set to hit a new milestone for executions this week
US: This week, the number of executions in the United States is expected to surpass a new high, despite a national decline in support for the death penalty.
Over the course of a week, executions of prisoners in five states were planned, an exceptionally high number of executions. On Friday, Freddie Owens was executed by lethal injection in South Carolina; on Tuesday, Marcellus Williams passed away in Missouri; on Thursday, Emmanuel Littlejohn in Oklahoma and Alan Miller in Alabama will pass away.
According to statistics from the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, if the last two are carried out, the United States will have carried out 1,600 executions since the death penalty was reintroduced by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976.
The executive director of the DPIC, Robin Maher, told Newsweek that “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 accurately reflect the priorities of the communities they serve.”
“It shows a clear disconnect between the agendas of elected officials and the reality that Americans are turning away from the death penalty.”
The majority of Americans continue to favor the death penalty for murderers, with supporters often claiming that the families of the victims benefit from such executions.
Polling, however, indicates that during the last 20 years, support has decreased.
According to the most recent Gallup survey, only 53% of Americans now favor the death sentence, down from 80% in 1994.
For its polls intended to track opinions on social, economic, and political issues, Gallup claims to interview at least 1,000 American people who are 18 years of age or older. Respondents are reached by phone and landline.
Maher cited a November 2023 Gallup poll indicating that the proportion of Americans who think the death sentence is imposed unjustly had risen to 50%, the highest level since the poll’s inception in 2000.
After hitting all-time highs in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the number of executions has been progressively declining ever since.
According to DPIC, twenty-nine states, Washington, D.C., and the federal government have either stopped carrying out executions or abolished the death penalty.
Southern states currently carry out the majority of executions. This year, they will be implemented in the following eight states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah.
After a string of unsuccessful lethal injections, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey ordered an interview and then wrote a letter announcing the state was resumed executions last year. “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,” Ivey wrote.
However, Larry Roberts’ exoneration in July brought the total number of persons freed from death row since 1973 to 200. The Equal Justice Initiative claims that there is one prisoner on death row for every eight executions.
According to the DPIC, there is ongoing racial prejudice in the implementation of the death penalty, as seen by the disproportionate number of Black individuals on death rows. Out of the sixteen individuals executed so far this year, six were Black, two were Latino, and one was Native American.
Alan Miller will be put to death on Thursday in Alabama in what would be the country’s second-ever nitrogen gas execution. In this procedure, prisoners are forced to breathe only nitrogen, depriving them of oxygen and causing their death.
Kenneth Smith was executed by nitrogen gas in January, the first execution of that kind in state history. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall called the procedure “textbook.” Critics, however, compared it to human experimentation and said it was inhumane.
In Oklahoma, Emmanuel Littlejohn is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Thursday as well, having been involved in the 1992 robbery that resulted in the owner of a convenience store being shot. Littlejohn acknowledged that he was a part of the crime, but he claimed that his partner had fired the gun.
Littlejohn’s life was recommended to be spared by the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board last month, with a vote of 3-2. The governor has not yet made an announcement on his decision. first hours before Julius Jones was scheduled to be executed in 2021, Stitt modified his sentence, becoming the first time he had ever awarded mercy to a prisoner.
