This July marks the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Gregg v. Georgia, which reinstated the death penalty and reestablished it as a key element of the American criminal justice system. Since that ruling, capital punishment has gradually declined in prominence, with executions now concentrated in only a handful of states including Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Missouri.

This retreat is reflected in the actions of many state governors over the past two decades. In 2000, Illinois Republican Governor George Ryan imposed a moratorium on executions after 13 death row inmates were exonerated and later commuted nearly all existing death sentences in the state to life imprisonment. More recently, Democratic governors such as Gavin Newsom of California and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania have continued or introduced moratoriums. In June 2023, Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine—who had helped draft the state’s death penalty law—called for its abolition, stating it did not effectively deter murder and abandoning his previous moral justifications for capital punishment.

In contrast, former President Donald Trump emerged as a staunch advocate for the death penalty, making it a central component of his law-and-order platform. Trump resumed federal executions in 2020 after a 17-year lapse, overseeing 13 executions in the last six months of his first term. Before his tenure, the federal government had executed only three people since 1963. During his 2024 presidential campaign, he proposed expanding the list of capital crimes to include drug trafficking, human trafficking, and killings involving migrants, further emphasizing his commitment to broadening the use of capital punishment.

Upon taking office in January 2025, Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety.” The order directed the attorney general to pursue death sentences more vigorously, instructed the Justice Department to challenge Supreme Court rulings that limited the death penalty, and urged federal officials to assist states in acquiring the increasingly scarce lethal injection drugs necessary for executions. It also encouraged state prosecutors to seek the death penalty more frequently.

Florida exemplifies the president’s vision with its unique model granting the governor sole authority over execution decisions. Unlike most states, where courts set execution dates after prisoners exhaust appeals, Florida’s governor alone determines whether and when to sign death warrants for eligible inmates. Governor Ron DeSantis has exercised this power without transparency, as state Supreme Court rulings classify execution scheduling as an executive function exempt from open-government laws. Advocates, including Maria DeLiberato of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, have criticized this opacity, pointing out that there is no public insight into DeSantis’s criteria for selecting whom to execute. She remarked that the process could be as arbitrary as “throwing darts” or “spinning a roulette wheel.”

As the nation reflects on the half-century since Gregg v. Georgia, the death penalty remains a deeply polarized and evolving issue, shaped by shifting political leadership and ongoing debates about justice, deterrence, and morality.