Attitudes on the death penalty have changed since Christa Pike was convicted. Using the issue for politics hasn’t

J. Miles Cary/ Knoxville News Sentinel/USA Today Network/Reuters

When Christa Pike tortured and killed her classmate Colleen Slemmer in 1995, support for the death penalty was near its peak in the United States.

More than three-quarters of Americans, 77%, were in favor of capital punishment, according to polling by Gallup at the time.

Things changed in the decades Pike spent on death row before attempts to execute her by lethal injection failed Wednesday night.

About half the country, 52%, support the death penalty in the most recent Gallup data from 2025, although it’s important to note that a handful of Southern states – led by Florida, Texas and Oklahoma – are responsible for the bulk of executions today.

In the years before Pike’s crime, the death penalty had been a major issue in US politics and support for it has been worn as a sort of badge by politicians.

In 1992, then Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton left the presidential campaign trail to oversee the execution of Rickey Ray Rector , who was convicted in the 1981 killing of a police officer. Clinton’s presence in the state wasn’t required, but observers noted it fed into the candidate’s desire to appear tough on crime.

Clinton was proud not to grant clemency to Rector. “We should no longer feel guilty about protecting the innocent as Democrats,” he said from a debate stage in New Hampshire the day before his trip.

Subsequent Supreme Court cases outlawing the execution of people with intellectual disabilities would likely have prevented that execution from happening today (Rector had brain damage from a gunshot wound). The court has also barred executions for non-homicide offenses and crimes committed by juveniles.

Related: He executed death row prisoners. Then they came back to haunt him.

A few years later, Clinton further proved his toughness as president by signing the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 , part of a larger crime bill engineered by then-Sen. Joe Biden, by which “Congress established constitutional procedures for imposition of the death penalty for 60 offenses under 13 existing and 28 newly-created Federal capital statutes.”

Compare that to the 2016 presidential campaign of Clinton’s wife Hillary, when the death penalty was not a major issue at debates, but abolishing it was part of Democrats’ official party platform .

A few factors likely contributed to the shift.

The exoneration of at least 200 people who had been on death row since 1973 raised questions about whether the justice system could be trusted to mete out the ultimate penalty.

In 2000, then-Republican Illinois Gov. George Ryan became the first to impose a moratorium on the death penalty after more than a dozen death row inmates in that state were found to be innocent over the course of decades. Some other states have followed suit and Illinois abolished its death penalty in 2011.

Stephen J. Carrera/AP

Racial disparities in the application of the death penalty raised questions about how it was pursued and led courts in some states to outlaw it.

Biden, architect of the 1990s crime bill that supercharged the federal death penalty, campaigned for president on a platform of abolishing the death penalty at the federal level in 2020, but Democrats failed to follow up on the campaign promise.

However, Biden did, somewhat controversially, commute the death sentences of 37 of the 40 people then on federal death row.

Those remaining on federal death row are: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev , convicted of carrying out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; Dylann Roof, convicted of killing nine people at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015; and Robert Bowers , who killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018.

That mass commutation is probably the only reason there has not been an uptick in federal executions since President Donald Trump took office. During his first term Trump re-invigorated the death penalty at the federal level, carrying out 13 executions in the final seven months of his term.

Trump has frequently called for the execution of drug dealers and others.

“As soon as I am inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters. We will be a Nation of Law and Order again!” Trump wrote in one illustrative social media post.

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters/File

When he returned to office Trump signed an executive order promising to pursue the death penalty where possible, particularly for the killing of law enforcement officers or for killings perpetrated by undocumented immigrants.

Trump has been a public advocate of the death penalty for decades. He took out a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for New York to reinstate its death penalty when five black and Latino teenagers were charged with raping a woman in Central Park in the 1990s. The teens were later exonerated and received settlements from the city. A recent Netflix documentary has brought the case back into the spotlight and drawn criticism of the prosecutor who oversaw the case.

The Central Park 5 appeared at the Democratic National Convention in 2024.

The total US population of death row inmates is around 2,000 , according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that tracks capital punishment. More than 500 of those are in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom instituted a moratorium in 2019 .

Twenty-seven states have the death penalty, although there are moratoriums in place in four of those – California, Oregon, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to DPI .

In 2015, Nebraska’s state legislature felt so strongly about the issue that it overrode then-Gov. Pete Ricketts veto of a bill to abolish capital punishment. But Ricketts, a Republican, felt strongly too. The following year, he helped bankroll a voter initiative to override the state legislature. It succeeded, and Nebraska reinstated the death penalty in 2016. Ricketts is now a US senator running for reelection.

That same year, Californians rejected a ballot initiative to repeal the death penalty, although the moratorium signed Newsom would later halt the practice. Support for the death penalty has flagged in the US, but when voters get the opportunity, majorities in both red and blue states have kept it in place.

J. Miles Cary/诺克斯维尔新闻哨兵报/今日美国网络/路透社

1995 年，克丽斯塔·派克折磨并杀害了她的同学科琳·斯莱默，当时美国对死刑的支持率接近顶峰。

根据盖洛普当时的民意调查，超过四分之三的美国人（77%）赞成死刑。

在派克被关押在死囚牢房的几十年里，情况发生了变化。周三晚上，对她执行注射死刑的尝试失败了。

根据盖洛普最新发布的 2025 年数据，大约一半的美国人（52%）支持死刑，但值得注意的是，目前大部分死刑执行都发生在少数几个南方州，其中以佛罗里达州、德克萨斯州和俄克拉荷马州为首。

在派克犯罪之前的几年里，死刑一直是美国政治中的一个重大问题，支持死刑的政治家们将其视为一种荣誉勋章。

1992年，时任阿肯色州州长比尔·克林顿放下总统竞选活动，前往阿肯色州监督里基·雷·雷克托的死刑执行。雷克托因1981年杀害一名警官而被定罪。克林顿并非必须亲临阿肯色州，但观察人士指出，此举符合这位候选人希望展现其打击犯罪强硬形象的愿望。

克林顿对没有赦免雷克托感到自豪。在他前往新罕布什尔州的前一天，他在辩论台上说：“作为民主党人，我们不应该再为保护无辜者而感到内疚。”

最高法院后续的判例禁止处决智力障碍者，这很可能阻止了今天发生的这起死刑（雷克托因枪伤导致脑损伤）。最高法院还禁止对非谋杀罪行和未成年人犯罪执行死刑。

相关报道：他曾处决死刑犯。后来，这些死刑犯反过来纠缠了他。

几年后，克林顿签署了 1994 年联邦死刑法案，进一步证明了他作为总统的强硬作风。该法案是当时的参议员乔·拜登推动的一项更广泛的犯罪法案的一部分，该法案“为根据 13 项现有的和 28 项新制定的联邦死刑法规对 60 项罪行执行死刑制定了宪法程序”。

相比之下，克林顿的妻子希拉里在 2016 年的总统竞选中，死刑并不是辩论中的主要议题，但废除死刑是民主党官方党纲的一部分。

可能有几个因素促成了这种转变。

至少 200 名自 1973 年以来一直被判处死刑的人被宣告无罪，这引发了人们对司法系统是否值得信任，能否执行最终刑罚的质疑。

2000年，时任伊利诺伊州共和党州长乔治·瑞安成为美国历史上第一个暂停执行死刑的州长。此前，该州十几名死刑犯在数十年间被证明无罪。其他一些州也纷纷效仿，伊利诺伊州于2011年废除了死刑。

斯蒂芬·J·卡雷拉/美联社

死刑执行中存在的种族差异引发了人们对死刑执行方式的质疑，并导致一些州的法院取缔了死刑。

拜登是上世纪 90 年代加强联邦死刑的犯罪法案的设计者，他在 2020 年竞选总统时承诺废除联邦死刑，但民主党人未能兑现竞选承诺。

然而，拜登确实做出了一个颇具争议的决定，即减免了当时联邦死囚牢房中 40 人中 37 人的死刑。

目前仍被判处联邦死刑的有：焦哈尔·察尔纳耶夫，因实施 2013 年波士顿马拉松爆炸案而被定罪；迪伦·鲁夫，因在 2015 年于南卡罗来纳州查尔斯顿一座历史悠久的黑人教堂杀害 9 人而被定罪；以及罗伯特·鲍尔斯，因在 2018 年于匹兹堡生命之树犹太教堂杀害 11 名信徒而被定罪。

大规模减刑可能是自唐纳德·特朗普总统上任以来联邦死刑执行数量没有增加的唯一原因。在其第一任期内，特朗普重振了联邦层面的死刑制度，在其任期最后七个月内执行了13例死刑。

特朗普曾多次呼吁处决毒贩和其他人。

“我一就职，就会指示司法部大力推行死刑，以保护美国家庭和儿童免受暴力强奸犯、杀人犯和恶魔的侵害。我们将再次成为一个法治国家！”特朗普在一条颇具代表性的社交媒体帖子中写道。

Kevin Lamarque/路透社/档案照片

特朗普重返总统职位后签署了一项行政命令，承诺在可能的情况下寻求判处死刑，特别是对于杀害执法人员或非法移民实施的杀人行为。

几十年来，特朗普一直是死刑的公开支持者。上世纪90年代，五名黑人和拉丁裔青少年被控在中央公园强奸一名女子后，特​​朗普曾在《纽约时报》刊登整版广告，呼吁纽约恢复死刑。这些青少年后来被宣告无罪，并从纽约市政府获得了赔偿。最近，Netflix推出的一部纪录片让此案再次成为焦点，并引发了对负责此案的检察官的批评。

2024年，中央公园五人组出现在民主党全国代表大会上。

据追踪死刑执行情况的非营利组织“死刑信息中心”统计，美国死刑犯总数约为2000人。其中500多人在加利福尼亚州，该州州长加文·纽森于2019年暂停了死刑执行。

据DPI称，美国有27个州保留死刑，但其中4个州——加利福尼亚州、俄勒冈州、俄亥俄州和宾夕法尼亚州——暂停执行死刑。

2015年，内布拉斯加州议会强烈支持废除死刑，推翻了时任州长皮特·里基茨对一项废除死刑法案的否决。但身为共和党人的里基茨本人也强烈反对死刑。次年，他资助了一项旨在推翻州议会否决的选民倡议。该倡议最终获得通过，内布拉斯加州于2016年恢复了死刑。里基茨目前是美国参议员，正在竞选连任。

同年，加州选民否决了一项废除死刑的公投提案，尽管纽森州长签署的暂停死刑令后来终止了死刑的执行。在美国，对死刑的支持有所下降，但只要选民有机会投票，无论是在共和党占优势的州还是民主党占优势的州，大多数选民都选择保留死刑。