(OSV News) — “The future of the death penalty in the United States seems to be at a pivotal moment,” observed Emmjolee Mendoza Waters as she introduced three speakers for her organization’s June 18 webinar, “What’s Really Happening with the Death Penalty in 2025?”
Waters, director of the death penalty abolition program for the Washington-based Catholic Mobilizing Network, told her online audience that offering important updates now about the death penalty in the U.S. seemed to be particularly timely.
“The church declared 2025 as a Jubilee Year rooted in mercy, forgiveness and the call to reestablish right relationships,” she said.
Meanwhile, the church also recently mourned the death of Pope Francis, a steadfast voice against the death penalty, and witnessed the election of Pope Leo XIV, who shares Francis’ view on the issue.
According to Waters, a quick look at the death penalty in the U.S. could suggest that the use of the death penalty seems to be rising.
“In 2025 in the U.S., 23 people have been executed so far, and that represents a 16% increase over the total of executions in 2024,” she said. “And Florida has carried out 25% of those 2025 executions.”
However, the number of executions in the U.S. is overall at an all-time low and has been declining for years.
Waters reported that polls show that Americans around the country are much less supportive of the death penalty now than they have been in the past decades. “And yet,” she added, “five states had recently reinstated the death penalty — South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Indiana.”
American support for death penalty ‘plummeting’
Attorney Robert Dunham, the director of the Death Penalty Policy Project and the webcast’s first speaker, agreed with Waters that American support for the death penalty has been plummeting. At the same time, he said, “there are states passing blatantly unconstitutional laws and states gathering drugs illegally and violating protocols in the way they carry out lethal injection executions.”
“Some executions have been horribly botched,” Dunham said, “and all the data collected over the last 50 years suggests that the death penalty does not contribute to public safety.”
Dunham has a personal understanding of the data collected on the death penalty and crime prevention. He represented clients on death row in Pennsylvania for more than 25 years.
“This is the death penalty’s ‘last stand,'” said Stefanie Faucher, deputy director of the 8th Amendment Project and the webinar’s second speaker. The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits excessive bail, fines, and cruel and unusual punishment.
“I believe that we’re seeing that the death penalty will end,” she said, “but some proponents of it are struggling to hold on to it. Ultimately, that won’t change its downward trajectory.”
Faucher pointed out that in Louisiana, which recently resumed the death penalty 15 years after pausing its use, a huge outcry from the Jewish community challenged the suffocation execution of a condemned inmate. He had died choking on lethal gas.
“There really is a real uproar everywhere about these new methods of execution — lethal gas and the firing squad,” she said.
Republican-led efforts
Demetrius Minor, a former Pentecostal minister and the current executive director of Conservatives Concerned, said politically conservative Americans are now also reluctant to support capital punishment.
“They have a built-in distrust of the government,” he explained, “and they tend to see capital punishment as a dangerous overreach.”
Minor said death penalty support seen on the federal level contrasts what is happening in most states. “We’re even seeing Republican governors take measures to limit or end the death penalty in their states,” he said.
Gov. Mike Braun of Indiana recently announced that Indiana would no longer be using drugs in lethal injection executions. Indiana recently executed two men within six months, with the second dying from lethal injection May 20. Before December, executions had not taken place in that state in 15 years, and the statewide reaction was overwhelmingly negative.
“Braun said that he would be willing to have an open debate in Indiana about capital punishment,” Minor said.
Despite the fact that American death penalty use is declining, CMN’s webcast took place one week after four executions had been carried out around the country.
Americans do not know, hear or understand enough about the death penalty, and that is a problem, Waters said.
Faucher agreed. “The average person doesn’t know that some states are gassing people to death, and that lethal injection executions are legal in other states,” she said. “The more that people are informed about the cruelty and gross nature of the death penalty, the more they will likely turn against it.”
Slavery roots
Dunham said there is another aspect to the death penalty that Americans should better understand.
“The death penalty arises from America’s original sin, slavery,” he said.
“Its growth in the U.S. followed and is in line with the lynching of Blacks throughout our history,” he continued. “Historically, 7% of all murders in the United States have had Black offenders and White victims. But, 20.5% of all executions in the U.S. have executed Black offenders whose victims were White. That’s an over-representation of more than 3.5 times. There’s no legitimate reason why we should be seeing numbers like that concerning those who are executed in this country.”
As the 60-minute webinar drew to a close, speakers were asked to tell average Americans what they can do to help end the death penalty.
“Start with conversations with friends and neighbors,” suggested Faucher. “Then, extend your conversations to local, state and federal officials. Your conversations can raise concerns about the use of the death penalty.”
Dunham agreed that conversations with elected officials are the best strategy for ending the death penalty. “A fair and effective local democracy is the greatest opponent of capital punishment,” he said.
Catherine M. Odell writes for OSV News from Indiana.
