By Daniel Payne
Dec 29, 2025 / 06:00 am
A rise in executions in the United States in 2025 occurred alongside “shifting public opinion” against the death penalty, offering anti-death-penalty advocates a hopeful sign going into 2026 even amid high levels of capital punishment.
The Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit group that tracks and catalogs executions in the United States, said in its year-end report that 48 prisoners were executed in the U.S. in 2025, up from 25 the year before.
The near-100% increase in executions was driven in large part by Florida, which at 19 executions counted for about 40% of the year’s total, the group noted.
The year also saw the expanded use of a controversial method of execution, that of nitrogen gas. Louisiana and Alabama both killed two condemned prisoners using this method, which advocates have said poses the risk of a slow, agonizing death. Alabama murderer Anthony Boyd reportedly took around 20 minutes to die during his execution by gas.
South Carolina executed two inmates by firing squad, the first such executions in the U.S. in 15 years. Lawyers alleged that one of those executions was botched, leading to the inmate suffering before dying.
The U.S. Supreme Court, meanwhile, “denied every request to stay an execution” in 2025, the Death Penalty Information Center noted, while several states passed laws expanding the death penalty or otherwise supporting it.
Public opinion shifts against death penalty; new death sentences decline
Though executions were up in 2025, data indicate a growing public opposition to the death penalty, both in poll numbers and in the declining number of prisoners condemned to death in the United States.
The Death Penalty Information Center noted that new death sentences were down in 2025, declining to 22 from 24, with “only 14 juries nationwide” reaching unanimous death verdicts.
Though the decline was relatively small, it reflects a decades-long overall trend in the reduction of death sentences in the U.S., which peaked at 325 in 1986.
A Gallup poll this year, meanwhile, found that public support for the death penalty reached a 50-year low of 52%, while 44% of Americans oppose the death penalty, the highest level recorded since 1966.
A majority of those under 55, meanwhile, oppose the death penalty.
The shift suggests changing opinions in a country known for its relatively high levels of executions. The U.S. ranked third in 2023 for the number of executions in countries where that number was known.
And while countries such as China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia regularly record significantly more executions than the U.S., many of the United States’ traditional geopolitical allies outlaw executions entirely, including effectively all of Western Europe.
A near-majority of U.S. states outlaw executions, which could help to explain decreasing public support for the practice.
Yet while opinion is shifting, Catholics notably remain largely supportive of the practice: A November poll from EWTN News and RealClear Opinion Research found a majority of Catholic voters in the U.S. support it.
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‘Vengeance’s empty promises’
Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, the executive director for the anti-death penalty group Catholic Mobilizing Network, admitted that 2025 was a “tough year” for pro-life advocates looking to abolish capital punishment in the U.S.
“We started off the year on a high note,” she told CNA, pointing to former President Joe Biden’s December 2024 commutations of 37 federal prisoners on death row. The beginning of the Catholic Church’s jubilee year, meanwhile, offered a spiritual bolster to life advocates.
But “executions have been happening at breakneck speed” in 2025, she said.
“The Trump administration was talking about the death penalty from day one,” she said. “They haven’t been able to do much in terms of executions [at the federal level], but it’s kind of permeated things and given political cover to elected officials in states.”
Murphy acknowledged that Florida carried out “the lion’s share” of executions in 2025. “I’ve talked to almost every Catholic bishop in the state of Florida,” she said. “They’re stumped. It’s very troubling.”
Like many bishops in the U.S., the Florida bishops regularly petition the state government to commute death sentences, though to no avail. The last clemency granted by an executive in Florida was in 1983, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Executive clemency is somewhat rare in the U.S., though at times it has been used dramatically, including Biden’s mass clemency order as well as North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s commutation of 15 death row cases at the end of 2024.
In spite of the grim execution numbers in 2025, Murphy admitted there are “encouraging signs” for life advocates.
“The jubilee year has been a true reminder that our compass, our North Star, is life — the sanctity of life,” she said. “There’s something about a jubilee year and about the promise it holds. It has exposed vengeance’s empty promises.”
She pointed out that the executions being carried today are actually reflective of “the standard of three decades ago.”
“When you look at the sentencing of the average person being executed today, that sentence happened 25, 30 years ago,” she said. “When you look at the number of death sentences now, it’s low.” She pointed to the well-documented decline in death sentences both this year and overall from decades before.
Murphy said life advocates are looking to 2026 to continue those encouraging trends. Catholic Mobilizing Network in December joined a broad coalition of more than 50 organizations seeking to end the death penalty in the United States.
Activists are generally required to “go state by state” in their efforts to abolish the death penalty, Murphy said. She pointed to promising abolition efforts in Ohio and Oklahoma, among others.
One of the Catholic group’s key focuses, she said, is in speaking to younger generations.
“Young people don’t have the baggage around the death penalty that some older generations might,” she said. “We’re bringing exonerees and murder victim family members to campuses and younger communities and helping them really grab onto the issue and make it their own.”
“Young people are sometimes our best advocates,” she said. “They have lots of energy and a real commitment to a broad consistent life ethic.”
Among the more notable developments in death penalty advocacy in recent years was the Catholic Church’s 2018 update of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that declared the death penalty “inadmissible” and stated that the Church seeks its abolition around the world.
Pope Francis regularly spoke out against the death penalty, while Pope Leo XIV has signaled his own opposition to it. In September he said support for the death penalty is “not really pro-life,” a remark that drew controversy even as it appeared to line up with the catechism’s directive.
Elsewhere, Church leaders have turned to Catholic tradition as part of efforts to abolish the death penalty. In August the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops called for a novena asking the faithful to pray for an end to Florida’s death penalty.
Murphy acknowledged that the 2018 catechism revision “threw some people,” though she said there are opportunities at hand for Catholics to evangelize on the need to save the lives of those condemned to die.
“There’s catechesis we need to do, and formation, about how we can be reconcilers and restorers,” she said. “It’s Jesus’ way. But we need to spend time walking with one another and figuring this out together.”
