Amnesty’s country coordinator for North America, Lise Rossi spoke at our September meeting about the death penalty in the US.

Amnesty started working against the death penalty in 1977 when 16 countries had abolished it and now 140 countries no longer have the death penalty. 

Since the 1970’s 1534 people have been executed in the US. The states using the death penalty the most are Texas, Oklahoma and Virginia.  California has the most people on death row but they do not execute them. There are currently 2,500 people on death row in the US.

Since 1973 180 people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence. In 2019 -2021 10 people have been exonerated, the majority being black, because of retraction of testimonies, official misconduct, misleading forensics etc. Two thirds of people the US are anti -death penalty.

Amnesty has frequent actions for people facing the death penalty in the US.