A Statement from Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy on the release of “The Death Penalty in 2025,” a year-end report by the Death Penalty Information Center

For Immediate Release: December 15, 2025
Contact: Moira Greaney at (e) moira@catholicsmobilizing.org (p) 301-456-4733
Website: catholicsmobilizing.org X: @CMNEndtheDP

The Death Penalty Information Center published its 2025 Year-End report on December 15, 2025. Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, responds:

“The Death Penalty Information Center’s (DPI) year-end report serves as an important barometer check as a challenging year comes to a close. Without negating the regrettable rise in state-level executions or the unfortunate backslides that have led to the use of problematic execution methods, DPI’s report highlights that when it comes to public sentiment, capital punishment continues to fall out of favor. 

This shifting public opinion was often hidden by the overt disregard of human dignity that we saw this year. In 2025, executions nearly doubled that of last year and some states took the lives of these individuals in barbaric ways, including by firing squad and nitrogen asphyxiation. Legitimate concerns went altogether ignored by the Supreme Court which denied every request to stay executions despite the critical role it plays as the last-line of defense in safeguarding fairness in our criminal legal system.

The cruelty and inhumanity of capital punishment was on raw display this year. In sight of this, the American public reported its lowest support of the practice in more than 50 years.

Public opinion has a significant impact on the way the death penalty is applied across the country. We saw this clearly on display in the number of new death sentences this year.

As DPI’s report highlighted, the executions we are seeing today are sentences that were handed down three decades ago on average. If tried today, many of these individuals would have never even received the death penalty because their juries would not have voted for it.

In 2025, less than half of capital juries returned a death sentence, which goes to show that jurors understand more about the effects of mental illness, trauma, and other mitigating factors. New death sen­tences declined this year (22), reflect­ing the grow­ing reluc­tance of juries to impose death sen­tences. 

The system of capital punishment in the United States is being driven by a handful of states and elected officials that have conflated their vision of justice with their dependence on vengeance. But in the face of crime and violence, vengeance does nothing to seek restoration. A reliance on vengeance will never make way for healing.

Just yesterday, the Catholic Church celebrated the Jubilee of Prisoners, the final special celebration in this Jubilee year dedicated to hope. In his homily during the celebratory Mass, Pope Leo XIV reminded us: 

“No human being is defined by what they have done, and justice is always a process of repair and reconciliation.”

We have the capacity to build a justice system that honors the dignity and worth of human life, even while holding individuals accountable for harmful actions. Victims of harm deserve a justice system that responds to their needs and seeks what those most directly impacted by harm need to repair. 

There is still much work to be done to realize a vision of justice that honors the human dignity of those who have suffered and caused harm. Now more than ever, Catholics can educate, advocate, and pray to end this death-dealing practice in our country.”

Key points:

*New death sen­tence num­bers are accu­rate of December 15, 2025, at 9am ET. These num­bers are sub­ject to change if addi­tion­al death sen­tences are hand­ed down before the end of 2025. Asterisks indi­cate num­bers that are sub­ject to change. Execution totals include exe­cu­tions sched­uled for December 17 and 18.

  • Executions rose from 25 in 2024 to 48* in 2025. The change is due almost entire­ly to a dra­mat­ic increase in exe­cu­tions in Florida, which alone account­ed for 19* exe­cu­tions, or 40%* of the year’s total.
  • New death sen­tences declined this year (22), reflect­ing the grow­ing reluc­tance of juries to impose death sen­tences. Only 14 juries nation­wide were able to unan­i­mous­ly agree to impose death sentences.
  • This year’s Gallup poll found that sup­port for the death penal­ty is at a 50-year low of 52%. Gallup also found that 44% of Americans now oppose the death penal­ty — the high­est lev­el of oppo­si­tion record­ed since May 1966.
  • South Carolina per­formed the first fir­ing squad exe­cu­tion nation­al­ly in 15 years; an autop­sy after Mikal Mahdi’s fir­ing squad exe­cu­tion indi­cat­ed it was ​“botched” when the shoot­ers appar­ent­ly missed their target.
  • The U.S. Supreme Court denied every request to stay an exe­cu­tion in 2025.
  • The people executed this year were sentenced an average of 27 years ago, when support for capital punishment was higher, at a time when public support for the death penalty was higher, defense representation quality and availability was lower, and jurors understood much less about the effects of mental illness, trauma, and other mitigating factors.

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Headquartered in Washington, D.C., Catholic Mobilizing Network is a national organization that mobilizes Catholics and people of goodwill to end the death penalty, advance justice solutions in alignment with Catholic values and promote healing through restorative justice approaches and practices. For more information and to join the movement, visit catholicsmobilizing.org.

To speak with Robin Maher, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center, about national death penalty trends, please contact media@deathpenaltyinfo.org