Executions are on the rise in the United States, and Florida is leading the charge.
Three other states — Tennessee, Alabama, and Oklahoma — have all scheduled executions for the same day, Aug. 13. While it was coincidental, that hasn’t happened in nearly 16 years. Last month, Florida scheduled two executions on the same day, the first time that’s happened since 1962.
Thursday’s executions include:
The increasing numbers are coming from a very small number of states, mostly Florida. The Sunshine State has overseen 12 executions already this year, with three more scheduled in August and September, following a record-breaking 19 executions in 2025.
“You look at the country as a whole, you’ve just got this little pocket of five or six states that are using the death penalty, executing people, and a small number of states that are still imposing new death sentences,” Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told the Associated Press.
Executions increasing in US, world
There were 47 inmates put to death in 2025 in the United States, the most since 2009. Nineteen of them were in Florida, nearly four times as many as any other state.
The others were in Alabama (5), Arizona (2), Indiana (2), Louisiana (1), Mississippi (2), Missouri (1), Oklahoma (2), South Carolina (5), Tennessee (3), and Texas (5).
So far this year, there have been 19 people executed in the U.S., with 12 of them happening in Florida. Executions for three more Florida death row inmates are already scheduled, despite repeated claims by inmate attorneys that the state is not following its own lethal injection protocols and is causing unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment to each executed prisoner.
Worldwide, executions surged in 2025 to the highest recorded number in 44 years, according to the annual Death Sentences and Executions Global Report released by human rights advocacy group Amnesty International.
At least 2,707 people were executed, mostly in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other regions where authoritarian leaders have cracked down on dissent and human rights, the report said. That number does not include the thousands that Amnesty International believes but could not verify were executed in China, North Korea, Iraq, and Vietnam.
In its report, Amnesty International singled out Gov. Ron DeSantis’ newly accelerated death warrant pace and named him as one of the U.S. officials “falsely portraying the death penalty as having a unique deterrent effect.”
When asked about the report, DeSantis’ communications director Alex Lanfranconi said in an email, “My advice to those who are seeking to avoid the death penalty in Florida would be to not murder people.”
Why is DeSantis calling for so many executions?
DeSantis, who issued only nine death warrants in the five years before the sudden acceleration last year, said that the victims’ families have waited long enough.
“I don’t take joy in doing that; it’s a weighty thing,” DeSantis said the day of the double execution on July 28. “Some of the victims’ families have been waiting a long time, and some of them are just like, ‘when are we going to get justice?’ “
Florida has the second-largest number of people on death row after California, with 239 prisoners waiting their turn. There are more than 20 inmates who have been there for 40 years or more. William “Tommy” Zeigler, Jr., has been there for 50 years for the 1975 Christmas Eve murders of his wife and three other people. He holds the record for the longest-serving death row inmate in the United States.
Florida allows multiple appeals, which allows for longer time on death row while they are resolved. Florida also leads the nation in prisoners exonerated, with 30 people cleared of capital crimes since 1973.
DeSantis has called the death penalty “an appropriate punishment for the worst offenders,” and explained that the reason he didn’t issue many death warrants in previous years was largely due to COVID-19 happening a year into his term.
The change also came after President Donald Trump issued a day-one executive order upon taking office in January 2025, instructing the Attorney General to prioritize seeking death sentences and to encourage state attorneys general to do the same.
Who is scheduled to be executed in Florida?
How many US states have the death penalty?
In the U.S., 27 states, the U.S. government, and the U.S. military have the death penalty, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The states include: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.
However, the governors of four of them — California, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Ohio — have put execution on hold. In 2022, then-Ohio Gov. Kate Brown commuted the death sentences of all the state’s inmates.
C. A. Bridges is a journalist for the USA TODAY Network-Florida’s service journalism Connect team. You can get all of Florida’s best content directly in your inbox each weekday by signing up for the free newsletter, Florida TODAY.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: 3 states executing people on same day, Florida leading new surge
Reporting by C. A. Bridges, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida / Tallahassee Democrat
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By C. A. Bridges, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida | USA TODAY Network
