The Supreme Court halted executions in Furman v. Georgia (1972), finding death penalty laws arbitrary, then allowed them to resume under revised laws in Gregg v. Georgia (1976). In McCleskey v. Kemp (1987), the Court accepted a study showing that killers of white victims were far more likely to be sentenced to death, but ruled that statistics were not enough to overturn a sentence.
The death penalty grew from a history of lynching and racial terror. Black people remain overrepresented on death row, and cases with white victims are far more likely to end in execution.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, executions rose from 25 in 2024 to 47 in 2025, driven largely by Florida, while new death sentences fell to 23. Twenty-three states have abolished the death penalty, and several others have paused executions.