Over the next few years, we can expect to see a lot of high-profile death penalty trials in the news. Luigi Mangione will soon face trial for shooting and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a New York City street last year. And the federal Department of Justice will likely seek the execution of Rahmanullah Lakanwal for the killing of National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom, in Washington, D.C., last month. There could also be federal death penalty trials for the killings of Israeli embassy staffers, a Minnesota legislator, and a Ukrainian refugee. The list goes on.
Many of these famous federal cases have become political symbols and vehicles for arguments about healthcare, the war in Afghanistan, and much else. But they will also provide insight into public views on crime and punishment. Americans register their opinions at the ballot box, but they also do it when serving on juries, particularly when deciding whether a defendant should die.The choices jurors make in the next year will give us some hints of whether a more punitive or rehabilitative, even merciful, mindset is winning out across the country.
President Donald Trump’s rhetoric might lead one to think we are in a peak age of severity, but the trials of Mangione, Lakanwal, and others will be the true litmus tests of whether Americans are really in sync with such harsh views. Over the last year, the trends have actually run in two directions at the same time. And it’s not simply the expected pattern of red states favoring the death penalty while blue states reject it.
Only 27 states still allow the death penalty to be handed down (along with the federal government and the U.S. military). This year, prosecutors in just 11 of those states sought the death penalty against 51 people, according to a new report released today by the Death Penalty Information Center.
But jurors chose to send fewer than half of them to death row. In red Alabama, jurors chose death in four cases and life without parole in 16. In blue California, jurors chose death in five and life in just one.
In 1996, by comparison, jurors across the country sent more than 300 people to death row. (We don’t know how often prosecutors sought the death penalty that year.) There were more murders back then, but nowhere near enough to account for this difference.
Support for the death penalty has dropped in Gallup polls over the last few decades, from 77% in 1995 to 52% this year.
Gallup has found Democrats and younger people tend to oppose the death penalty, while Republicans and older people tend to support it. Trump began the year issuing an executive order demanding more executions. But since then, a number of conservative state officials have questioned its use in high-profile cases. In Texas, Republican legislators argued for the innocence of death row prisoner Robert Roberson. In Oklahoma, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt commuted the death sentence of Tremane Wood, responding to arguments that it was unfair because Wood’s brother killed the victim in the case, Ronnie Wipf. There is speculation in the Ohio press that Republican Gov. Mike DeWine will come out more broadly against the death penalty before he leaves office next month.
But for every Republican state official who opposes the death penalty, there is one who, like the president, champions it. This helps explain why 2025 has been a boom year for executions, with 46 thus far — the most since 2010 — and another two scheduled this week. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has overseen the most executions in a single year in the state’s history by a wide margin. The Death Penalty Information Center found that legislators from Arkansas to Idaho passed more bills to expand the death penalty in 2025 than in recent years, making more crimes eligible for the punishment and approving new execution methods like the firing squad and nitrogen gas.
But if jurors keep refusing to hand down death sentences at the rate they have in the last year, there will be far fewer people for these states to execute. That’s why it’s so important to watch the choices juries are making today.
Jury rooms are closed off to the public, but the story behind the next execution in Georgia shows just how brutal the arguments inside them can be. This one played out like the movie “12 Angry Men,” in reverse.
Stacey Humphreys was convicted in 2007 of fatally shooting two real estate agents, Cyndi Williams and Lori Brown, according to The Associated Press.
In recent court filings, Humphreys’ lawyers allege that eleven jurors were prepared to sentence him to life in prison. But some of them later told the lawyers that a single juror screamed at them and vowed to stay in the room until they all voted for death — and eventually they did.
Humphreys’ lawyers have since argued that this episode — along with alleged lies told by the same juror during the selection process — should be reason to throw out the sentence. A series of state and federal courts have disagreed, ruling that the juror’s conduct cannot be used to question the verdict. Georgia plans to execute Humphreys on Tuesday night.
