Trump oversaw more federal executions than all states combined this year, a first in US history

Government carried out 10 killings in 2020 following 17-year pause

The US president, Donald Trump, has overseen more federal executions this year than all states combined, a first in American history.

After a 17-year pause in federal executions, the US government has carried out 10 in 2020 even as support for capital punishment continued to fall among the national population.

It is the highest single-year total in more than 120 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre (DPIC).

In the 19 states with active death-penalty programmes, seven executions were carried out this year before the coronavirus pandemic put a temporary pause on state-level killings.

US states carried out 22 executions in 2019.

“We have never seen it before," said Robert Dunham, executive director of the DPIC. “We never expected to see it. And it may be a long time before we ever see it happen again.”

The centre does not take a side in the debate over the death penalty, Mr Dunham has said, but it has criticised the way states and the federal government carry out the death penalty, singling out problems with racial bias and secrecy, among other things.

The Trump administration has three more executions scheduled before the inauguration on 20 January of the Democratic president-elect, Joe Biden, who is an opponent of the death penalty.

One of those scheduled to be executed is Lisa Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row.

She was convicted of using a rope to strangle a pregnant woman, 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett, in 2004 and then using a kitchen knife to cut the baby girl from the womb, authorities said.

If Montgomery is executed as planned on 12 January, she would be the first woman executed by the federal government in more than 60 years.

The last federal execution is scheduled for 15 January, Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, and just five days before Mr Biden's inauguration.

Texas accounted for three of the seven state executions in 2020, with one each in Alabama, Georgia, Missouri and Tennessee, the DPIC report said.

The newly released report cited a 2020 Gallup poll in which 43 per cent of respondents said they oppose the death penalty – the highest level of opposition to capital punishment that Gallup has registered since 1966.

Despite the 55 per cent support for capital punishment in the poll, Mr Dunham said most Americans had “nuanced views” and that many who say they support the death penalty in theory do not like it in practice.

“It is too soon to tell if they want no death penalty at all,” he said.

Additional reporting by AP