USA - DPIC

USA - Death Sentences for 18-20 Year-Olds at 20-Year Low

April 16, 2026:

April 16, 2026 - USA. Death Sentences for 18-20 Year-Olds at 20-Year Low, DPIC Report Finds

The Death Penalty Information Center released updated data Monday showing that death sentences and executions for individuals who were 18, 19 or 20 years old at the time of their crimes continued a decades-long downward trend in 2025, adding new figures to a 20-year analysis of capital punishment for young adults.

The update builds on DPIC’s April 2025 report, Immature Minds in a “Maturing Society”: Roper v. Simmons at 20, according to the organization. That report concluded that “18-, 19- and 20-year-olds are equally deserving as those under 18 to be excluded from death penalty eligibility,” and the newly-released data incorporates 2025 figures into that existing analysis.

Of the 23 individuals sentenced to death in 2025, only 1 was in the 18-to-20 age group, down from 3 in 2024, according to DPIC. Over the past 5 years, from 2021 through 2025, juries sentenced just 5 individuals in this age group to death, accounting for 4.6% of all new death sentences, the report found. By comparison, in 2008, juries sentenced 20 individuals in this age group to death, a post-Roper v. Simmons high.

Death sentences for people in this age group are also increasingly geographically concentrated, according to DPI. In 2025, Florida was the only state to impose a death sentence on a person who was 18 to 20 at the time of the crime. Since 2020, just 4 states — Alabama, Arizona, California and Florida — have imposed new death sentences for individuals in this age group.

As of 2025, 64% of individuals in this age group currently facing death sentences are located in just four states: California (25), Florida (12), Alabama (12) and Texas (9), according to DPIC. The report said this continues a trend of geographic concentration first identified in Immature Minds: from 2005 to 2009, as 21 states and the federal government-imposed sentences on young people in this cohort; from 2015 to 2019, that number dropped to 10 states.

Executions of individuals aged 18 to 20 at the time of their crimes also continued on a downward trajectory in 2025, DPIC reported. 3 of the 47 individuals executed in 2025, or 6%, were in this age group at the time of their crimes, down from 5 individuals in 2024. DPIC said 72% of executions over the past 5 years involving people in this cohort took place in just 3 states: Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama. Since 2005, Texas alone has carried out 49% of all executions of young people in this age group.

The report also noted that 50 of the 63 young people in this age group executed in Texas were people of color.

Among those executed in 2025 was Jessie Hoffman, who was 18 at the time of his offense. His execution on March 18 marked Louisiana’s 1st execution in 15 years and the state’s 1st use of nitrogen gas as a method of execution, DPIC reported. Had Hoffman been 3 months younger at the time of the crime, he would not have been eligible for the death penalty under the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling in Roper v. Simmons, which recognized that juveniles are less culpable for capital crimes because their brains had not fully developed.

Cecelia Koppel, one of Hoffman’s attorneys and director of the Center for Social Justice at Loyola University College of Law, said in a statement cited by DPIC: “Tonight, the State of Louisiana carried out the senseless execution of Jessie Hoffman … He was a father, a husband, and a man who showed extraordinary capacity for redemption. Jessie no longer bore any resemblance to the 18-year-old who killed Molly Elliot.”

Court filings cited by DPIC described Hoffman’s childhood as marked by “sexual, physical, and verbal abuse, and other torture and violence.” His attorneys said he experienced psychological and physical harm at the hands of both parents from an extremely young age.

Defense attorney Caroline Tillman, in a statement cited by DPIC, described Hoffman’s transformation over nearly 3 decades in prison as proof “that people can change,” noting his “deep remorse” and determination “to make amends however he could.” Tillman added that Hoffman “built a family inside those walls — not just with the men who served time alongside him, but with the officers and staff who came to know him over decades,” and was “a steady source of strength, offering guidance and comfort to those around him.”

DPIC’s updated findings describe what the organization called “an unbroken downward trajectory” in both sentencing and executions of young adults since 2005. The report framed the trend as part of a broader shift, stating that a “meaningful examination of all the evidence suggests that 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds are equally deserving as those under 18 to be excluded from death penalty eligibility.”

https://davisvanguard.org/2026/04/death-penalty-youth-sentences-executions/
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/trends-in-capital-punishment-for-youth-18-to-20-years-old