The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) has published an annual report on its use in the United States. There were 17 executions in 2020, 5 fewer than in 2019 and the lowest number since 1991.
Courts handed down 18 new death sentences in 2020, fewer than in any year in the past four decades, but most were handed down in the first three months of the year, before states began to impose restrictions due to the epidemic. It also caused delays in some executions and trials where capital punishment could have been imposed, but DPIC said the country was on a march to near-record lows even before the disruptions caused by the epidemic. True, the US Department of Justice in 2020 for the first time in 17 years began executing federal prisoners and executed 10 people in the second half of the year, intending to execute two more people in January 2021. Seven convicts were executed in the states: three in Texas and one each in Alabama, Georgia, Missouri and Tennessee. Thus, for the first time in US history, the federal government executed more prisoners than all the states combined. The number of federal executions was the highest since President Dwight D. Eisenhower. DPIC characterized executions by the federal government as “historically abnormal behavior” and “exclusion” from the trend in recent years to reduce the use of this punishment.
All those executed in 2020 at the time of the crime were young: no older than 21 years old, many had severe mental illness, head injury, were mentally retarded or were abused in childhood. According to DPIC, seven of them were colored (five black, one Hispanic and one Indian). 76 percent of the victims they killed were white.
Newspaper headline:
Executions at a minimum