published: 21 December 2017
Overall use and public support of the death penalty is in decline. As of Nov. 8, 2017, 23 people were executed in the United States in 2017, the second-lowest number since 1991.
39 people are expected to be sentenced to death by the end of 2017, making it the second-lowest number since 1976, the year when capital punishment was declared constitutional again by the US Supreme Court.
Since the death penalty was legalized again in 1976 by the US Supreme Court, 1,465 people have been executed. Texas has accounted for 545 executions, over a third of the nation’s total.
Harris County, Texas, which contains Houston, is called the “death penalty capital of the world” and the “buckle of the American death belt” because 126 people have been executed there since 1976, more than any US state except the county’s home state of Texas.
Use of the death penalty in U.S. near a 25-year low, report finds
14 December 2017