Thirty-five states have either abolished the death penalty, have executions on hold, or have not carried out an execution in at least 5 years. Recently, three states, Arizona, Ohio, and Oklahoma, temporarily halted executions as reviews are conducted of recent botched executions. In four states, Arkansas, California, Kentucky, and North Carolina, a de facto moratorium on executions is in place because of lethal-injection challenges; none of those states has had an execution since 2008. Colorado, Oregon, and Washington have formal moratoriums on executions imposed by their governors. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have abolished the death penalty. In 7 additional states, while no formal hold is in place, no execution has been conducted in at least five years. The U.S. military and federal government also authorize the death penalty, but neither has had an execution in over ten years. See the table for details on each state's situation. Click image at left to see enlarged chart.

Jurisdictions with no formal hold, but no executions in over 5 years

(Posted by DPIC, July 24, 2014). See Lethal Injection, Death Penalty in Flux, and States with and without the death penalty.

The execution of Joseph Wood III in Arizona on July 23 took over two hours, with witnesses reporting that Wood gasped and snorted over 600 times during the procedure. Wood was executed using midazolam and hyrdromorphone, the same drug protocol used in January's botched execution of Dennis McGuire. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit had stayed Wood's execution and ordered the state to release information about the source of the lethal injection drugs and the training of those who would carry out the execution, but the stay was lifted by the U.S. Supreme Court on July 22, allowing the state to maintain secrecy. Attorneys for Wood tried to file an emergency request to halt the execution because Wood was still awake an hour into the procedure. Dale Baich, one of Wood's attorneys, said, “I’ve witnessed a number of executions before and I’ve never seen anything like this. Nor has an execution that I observed taken this long.” Arizona Governor Jan Brewer ordered a review of the execution, saying she was “concerned by the length of time” that it took. The director of the Department of Corrections said they will conduct a full review and are waiting on results of a toxicology study and autopsy. 

(M. Berman, "Arizona execution lasts nearly two hours; lawyer says Joseph Wood was ‘gasping and struggling to breathe,’" Washington Post, July 23, 2014.) See Botched Executions and Lethal Injection.