A look at the status of US executions in 2025

Six men have died by court-ordered execution so far this year in the U.S., and 14 other people are scheduled to be put to death in eight states during the remainder of 2025.

Three men are set to be executed in Arizona, Florida and Oklahoma next week. The other states with scheduled executions this year are Alabama, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, though Ohio’s governor has been routinely postponing the actions as their dates near.

The most recent U.S. execution took place last Friday, when Brad Sigmon, 67, died by firing squad in South Carolina. Sigmon, who killed his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat in 2001, was the first U.S. prisoner in 15 years to die by that method. Sigmon chose it; he saw it as preferable to the electric chair or lethal injection.

Sigmon was the second man to be executed in South Carolina this year. Alabama, Florida and Texas also have carried out executions this year.

If all the executions scheduled for March take place, nine people will have been executed in the first three months of the year. That’s the most in a three-month period since 10 people were executed from August 2024 through October 2024, according to records compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center.

Louisiana had been scheduled to execute a man by nitrogen gas on March 18, but a federal judge issued an order Tuesday halting the execution. An appeals court issued a stay of execution Tuesday for a Texas man who was scheduled to die by lethal injection Thursday.

A look at the executions scheduled for the rest of the year, by state:

Texas

Moises Sandoval Mendoza, 41, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on April 23. Mendoza strangled a 20-year-old woman in Collin County in 2004. He took her body to a field behind his house and kept her there for several days until questioned by police, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Mendoza then drove her body to a dirt pit in Collin County, set it on fire and buried her under a brush pile.

Matthew Johnson’s execution is set for May 20. In 2012, Johnson walked into a gas station with a plastic bottle filled with bleach and continued behind the sales counter where a woman was working. He took cigarettes, lighters and cash before pouring the bleach on her and setting her on fire and walking out. The worker died later at a hospital as a result of her injuries. Johnson is 49.

Richard Lee Tabler, 46, was executed on Feb. 13 for killing a strip club manager and another man near Killeen in central Texas in 2004.

Steven Lawayne Nelson, 37, was executed on Feb. 5. He was convicted of the 2011 killing of the Rev. Clint Dobson, a 28-year-old pastor who was beaten, strangled and suffocated with a plastic bag inside a Baptist church in Arlington.

Arizona

Aaron Gunches, 53, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday in what would be Arizona’s first use of the death penalty in over two years. Gunches was convicted in the 2002 shooting death of Ted Price, his girlfriend’s ex-husband, near the Phoenix suburb of Mesa.

Earlier this month, Gunches passed up a chance to ask for a reprieve from his death sentence. He did not participate in a hearing before the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency, which noted on the record that he has waived his right to ask for a sentence commutation or a reprieve.

Gunches would be the first person to be executed in a state with a Democrat serving as governor since Virginia did so in 2017, when Terry McAuliffe was in charge. Arizona’s current governor is Katie Hobbs.

Oklahoma

Wendell Grissom, 56, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Thursday. Grissom and a co-defendant were convicted of killing Amber Matthews, 23, and wounding her friend at the friend’s home in Blaine County.

Oklahoma’s Pardon and Parole Board voted in February to deny recommending clemency for Grissom. Grissom’s attorneys did not dispute Grissom’s guilt but argued that he suffered from brain damage that was never presented to a jury. They also told the board Grissom has always accepted responsibility and expressed remorse for Matthews’ killing, even writing an apology to the woman’s family during his first interview with police.

Florida

Edward Thomas James, 63, is scheduled to be executed Thursday. James was convicted of killing a woman and raping and killing her 8-year-old granddaughter in Seminole County in 1993.

Michael Tanzi, 48, is scheduled to be executed April 8. He was convicted of kidnapping a woman in Miami and later strangling her and leaving her body in the Florida Keys.

James Dennis Ford, 64, was put to death on Feb. 13 after being convicted of murdering a couple in 1997 in Charlotte County.

South Carolina

Mikal Mahdi, 41, is scheduled to be executed on April 11 in Columbia, the state Supreme Court announced Friday.

Mahdi shot and killed an off-duty police officer in South Carolina in 2004. He is scheduled to become the fifth person executed in the state since the death penalty resumed last fall after a 13-month pause.

Mahdi can choose between lethal injection, electrocution or a firing squad.

The court also postponed a potential sixth execution, that of Steven Bixby. He killed two police officers in an Abbeville County land dispute in December 2003. Bixby was slated to be put to death in May, but the court decided that a judge first needs to determine if he is mentally competent.

Along with Sigmon, three other prisoners have been executed in South Carolina since September: Freddie Owens on Sept. 20; Richard Moore on Nov. 1; and Marion Bowman Jr. on Jan. 31. All died by lethal injection.

Alabama

James Osgood, 55, will be executed by lethal injection on April 24, Gov. Kay Ivey said Friday. Osgood was convicted of the 2010 killing of Tracy Lynn Brown in Chilton County. Prosecutors said he cut her throat after he and his girlfriend sexually assaulted her.

Osgood had dropped his appeals and asked the state to set an execution date for him.

Demetrius Frazier, 52, died by nitrogen gas on Feb. 6 for the 1991 rape and killing of Pauline Brown.

Tennessee

Earlier this month, Tennessee’s Supreme Court set execution dates for four inmates this year.

Oscar Smith, 74, is scheduled to be executed May 22. Smith was convicted of fatally stabbing and shooting his estranged wife and her teenage sons at their Nashville home in 1989.

Smith was within minutes of being executed in 2022, when Gov. Bill Lee issued a sudden reprieve. The stay came after Smith’s attorney requested the results of required purity and potency tests for the lethal injection drugs that were to be used on him. It turned out a required test was never done.

An independent review later found that none of the drugs prepared for the seven inmates executed in Tennessee since 2018 had been fully tested.

The Tennessee Department of Correction issued a new execution protocol in late December that will utilize the single drug pentobarbital.

Byron Black, 68, is scheduled to be executed on Aug. 5. Black was convicted in 1989 of three counts of first-degree murder for the shooting deaths of his girlfriend, Angela Clay, and her two daughters.

Donald Middlebrooks, 62, is set for execution on Sept. 24. Middlebrooks was convicted of torture and murder in the slaying of 14-year-old Kerrick Majors in Nashville in 1987.

Harold Nichols, 64, is scheduled to be executed on Dec. 11. Nichols was convicted of rape and first-degree felony murder in the 1988 death of Karen Pulley in Hamilton County.

Ohio

Ohio has two executions set for later this year, with Timothy Coleman scheduled to die on Oct. 30 and Kareem Jackson scheduled to be executed on Dec. 10.

However, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine has been routinely postponing the actions as their dates approach. He most recently did so in February, when he postponed into 2028 three executions scheduled for June, July and August of this year. DeWine has said publicly that he does not anticipate any further executions will happen on his watch as governor, which runs through 2026.

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Associated Press reporters Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama, and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.

Adrian Sainz, The Associated Press