As Oklahoma executes inmate in final U.S. death penalty of 2024, all attention turns to Biden

 Anti-death penalty organizations are calling on President Biden to commute the sentences of all 40 inmates on federal death row. This plea comes amid a resurgence of executions in several states in 2024.

As many as 27 states allow for the death penalty, although only nine of them carried out executions in 2024.

Dec. 19, 2024, 11:00 PM GMT+6

On Thursday morning, Oklahoma executed Kevin Ray Underwood, the nation's final execution of 2024. Underwood, a former grocery store stocker, was convicted of murdering 10-year-old Jamie Rose Bolin in 2006. His execution by lethal injection occurred on his 45th birthday, following a unanimous decision by the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board to reject his clemency request. Although the decision was anticipated, it marked a significant moment: 2024 is the first year since 2016 that no state granted clemency to a death row inmate, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The center's annual report on death penalty trends highlighted this shift in capital punishment, set against a key political moment for President Joe Biden. Last week, Biden issued a historic number of commutations and clemencies for nonviolent offenders, while anti-death penalty advocates have urged him to commute the sentences of all 40 federal death row inmates before the end of his term. Biden, who campaigned on abolishing the federal death penalty, imposed a moratorium during his presidency, while his successor, Donald Trump, has expressed support for expanding federal executions.

"All eyes are on President Biden right now," said Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "The issue isn't whether you support the death penalty but whether you believe these cases were handled fairly, given the political climate and prosecutorial overreach." Despite declining national support for the death penalty, particularly among millennials and Gen Z, some states—like Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas—continued to carry out executions, accounting for most of the 25 executions in 2024.

In September, the U.S. reached a significant milestone with Alabama's execution of Alan Eugene Miller, the 1,600th person executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Miller, convicted of a 2000 workplace shooting, was executed by nitrogen gas, a novel method used in three Alabama executions this year.

While several death penalty states have faced challenges obtaining lethal injection drugs, there was a resurgence of executions in 2024. Indiana carried out its first execution in 15 years, following Utah and South Carolina, which also executed inmates after long gaps. Idaho attempted its first execution in 12 years but halted the procedure due to complications. Other states, including Louisiana and Arizona, are preparing to resume executions after years of inactivity.

In Arizona, Attorney General Kris Mayes recently announced plans to seek a death warrant for a 2002 murder, citing the law's requirement to uphold capital punishment. Oklahoma's Republican Attorney General, Gentner Drummond, also emphasized the role of the death penalty in providing closure to victims' families, referring to Underwood as an "evil monster" after the state's pardon board rejected his clemency request.

Drummond, however, has not been uniformly supportive of all death penalty cases. In the high-profile case of Richard Glossip, convicted of a 1997 murder-for-hire plot, Drummond supported a review of the case, arguing that "justice would not be served" by continuing with a capital sentence marred by prosecutorial misconduct and errors. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering whether Glossip should receive a new trial.

The debate over capital punishment is becoming more localized, with only 10 of the 27 states with the death penalty imposing new death sentences in 2024. As Maher noted, "It's no longer a story about how America uses the death penalty, but how a small number of states, and even specific counties, continue its use."

Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Policy Project, analyzed FBI homicide data over the past 30 years and concluded that states without the death penalty had the lowest murder rates. States that continue to execute inmates are among the least safe for the public, Dunham's study found, and he described the death penalty as "a pointless exercise in cruelty."

Dunham's testimony before the Ohio legislature, which is considering abolishing its death penalty, reflects broader shifts in thinking. While prosecutors in Ohio argue that capital punishment is necessary for serious crimes, ACLU's Cassandra Stubbs highlighted racial disparities and the lingering questions of innocence as reasons to reconsider the death penalty's fairness. She emphasized that the continued use of capital punishment in a few states "feels like a last-gasp effort" to maintain a practice that many view as flawed and outdated.