27 States, One Map: The Death Penalty in America Today

Mapping the Death Penalty in the United States

When you look at a single number — how many states still have the death penalty — it tells you very little. The reality is a patchwork, and a map says it far better than a paragraph ever could. That’s why I built this interactive map: to show, state by state, where capital punishment stands today.

How to read the map

Each state is colored according to its current status. Some still actively carry out executions. Others keep the death penalty on the books but have paused it through a governor’s moratorium — meaning courts can still hand down death sentences, but no one is executed while the pause holds. And a growing number have abolished it entirely. Click on any state to see where it falls.

Where things stand in 2026

As of 2026, 27 states have the death penalty on the books, while 23 states and the District of Columbia have abolished it. But that figure hides the real story. Among the states that technically allow it, only a minority actively execute. Seven states have imposed moratoria, and four others are classifiable as “abolitionists-in-practice,” having passed more than ten years without an execution.

In practice, the death penalty is dormant across much of the country. Thirty-six states have either abolished it, have executions on hold, or have not carried one out in years.

The pauses come from the top. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom imposed a moratorium in 2019; the state holds the largest death row in the country, with over 600 inmates. Oregon has paused executions since 2011, Pennsylvania since 2015, and Ohio since 2020, citing problems with lethal injection. But a moratorium is fragile: unlike abolition, it can be lifted by a future governor at any time, without changing the law. Only legislative repeal or a court ruling removes the death penalty for good.

A country moving in two directions

The long-term trend is toward repeal. Recent abolitions include Virginia in 2021, Colorado in 2020, and New Hampshire in 2019 — and Virginia’s was historically striking, because it had executed more people than any other state in U.S. history.

But the picture is not one-directional. Some states are entrenching capital punishment rather than retreating from it. Alabama remains one of the most active states, with five people executed in 2025, and in 2024 it became the first state to execute a prisoner using nitrogen gas. At the federal level, the direction reversed sharply: a 2025 executive order rescinded the federal moratorium and directed prosecutors to seek the death penalty wherever reasonable — after President Biden had commuted 37 of the 40 federal death sentences to life imprisonment in December 2024.

Why this map matters to me

Behind every colored state on this map are real people — some guilty, some innocent, all waiting. I made this map because abstraction is the enemy of attention. It’s easy to forget that “27 states” means courtrooms, cells, and execution dates. My hope is that seeing it laid out geographically makes the scale of it harder to look away from.

Explore the map below, and click through to the cases behind the colors.

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