The Numbers

47 people were executed in the United States in 2025, up from 25 in 2024. That's an 88% increase in a single year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Florida alone accounted for 19 of those executions — more than a third of the national total.

The other 10 states that carried out executions in 2025 combined for 28. Texas came in second with 16, followed by Alabama and North Carolina, according to NPR.

Of the 27 states that still have the death penalty on the books, only 11 actually used it last year. Many didn't hold a single capital trial, according to Robyn Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

One Man's Policy

Florida's execution numbers dwarf the rest of the country.

As Maher told Newsweek: "If you took Florida out of the equation, this year would not look very different from past few years."

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed more death warrants in 2025 than in any year in Florida's history. The previous state record was 8 executions in a single year — set twice, in 1984 and 2014. He shattered it.

DeSantis has been explicit about his reasoning. He calls capital punishment "a strong deterrent" and "an appropriate punishment for the worst offenders." He's also made it structurally easier to impose: in 2023, he eliminated Florida's requirement that a jury unanimously recommend the death penalty.

When asked about the execution surge at a press conference, DeSantis pointed to COVID-19 delays as a partial explanation — claiming the pandemic "threw a wrench" into the state's execution schedule, according to Newsweek.

There's something to that. But COVID ended years ago. The backlog argument only goes so far when you're also lowering the legal threshold for sentences.

What Mainstream Coverage Gets Wrong

Most outlets are running the Amnesty International framing — lumping the U.S. increase in with Iran and Saudi Arabia's execution surges to create a guilt-by-association effect.

That comparison obscures more than it reveals. Iran executed 2,159 people in 2025, many for political dissent following the 2022 women's rights protests, according to Amnesty International. Saudi Arabia executed at least 356. The U.S. executed 47, virtually all for murder — the charge underlying nearly every modern American execution, though federal law permits capital punishment for additional offenses including treason, espionage, and certain other crimes.

Amnesty's report, which NPR leaned on heavily, is produced by an organization that advocates for abolishing the death penalty entirely. That's a legitimate position. But readers deserve to know the source has a stake in the conclusion.

China almost certainly executes more people than any country on earth. Amnesty International's own report acknowledges this — it does NOT include China in its count because Beijing won't release the data. That's a massive caveat that most coverage downplays or buries.

The Public Opinion Gap

Support for the death penalty has collapsed over 30 years. In 1994, 80% of Americans supported capital punishment for murder convictions. Today, according to the latest Gallup poll cited by Maher, that number sits at 52% — a five-decade low. Opposition has climbed to 44%.

New death sentences handed down by juries are also at historic lows.

Maher put it plainly to WDSU: "Here we have a complete divergence between what the public opinion polls tell us and what the number of new death sentences tell us that Americans feel about the death penalty and what elected officials are doing. Two very, very different things."

That tension is real. In a democracy, elected officials who consistently defy public opinion on a life-and-death issue should have to answer for it.

DeSantis is betting voters don't actually mean it — that the polling softness on capital punishment doesn't translate to the ballot box. History suggests he's probably right about that.

The Victims Nobody Mentions

Local coverage from WDSU and KCRA included something the national outlets largely skipped: the families of murder victims who have waited decades for closure.

Harold Jean Lucas has been on Florida's death row for nearly 50 years. He was convicted of shooting and killing 16-year-old Jill Piper in Bonita Springs in 1976. Her family — Cindy and Buck Piper — are still waiting.

That's half a century of a family living in legal limbo while the courts work through appeal after appeal.

The debate over the death penalty is legitimate. The moral arguments on both sides are real. But the coverage that focuses entirely on execution counts without mentioning the victims and their families is telling half the story.

Summary

The U.S. execution surge is almost entirely a Florida story driven by a specific governor making deliberate policy choices. The global comparison to Iran is journalistically lazy — the regimes, legal systems, and crimes involved are not remotely equivalent. And China, likely the world's leading executioner, doesn't even show up in the count.

DeSantis isn't wrong that Florida had a backlog. He's not wrong that murderers convicted beyond reasonable doubt have an argument for the ultimate penalty. But he lowered the jury threshold, accelerated the pace, and broke records — while public support for capital punishment hit a 50-year low.