United States of America - Universal Periodic Review - Death Penalty - April 2025
Country: United States of America
Partners: Witness to Innocence
Issues: Death Penalty
Mechanism: Universal Periodic Review
Report Type: Stakeholder Report
As long as the United States maintains the death penalty, exonerations from death row will continue to occur. As of 1 April 2025, the Death Penalty Information Center has recorded 200 instances across the United States in which individuals were exonerated after being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death since 1973. That figure equates to one wrongful conviction for every 8.3 executions carried out during that period.
While the death penalty is still legal in the United States, the rate of exonerations is concerning, so much so that the U.S. Supreme Court has expressed concern that “a disturbing number of inmates on death row have been exonerated.”
The UN Human Rights Committee recently shared this concern, expressing “concern[] at reports of a high number of persons wrongly sentenced to death and at the lack of compensation, or the inadequate compensation, provided to persons who are wrongfully convicted in retentionist states.”
