Thirty-four states have the death penalty, but only 12 carried out executions last year.
Six states have carried out executions this year, compared with 13 in 2011.
Five states carried out executions this year, down one from last year, when death sentences also declined.
Of the 31 that retained it, 10 states have carried out executions since 2016, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
There were executions in just seven states, about a third as many states carried out executions in 1999.
Fewer than thirty countries have carried out executions in the past few years: among them China, Japan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Somalia, and the United States.
In all, 59 countries still have the death penalty on their books, but only 25 carried out executions last year.
So far this year seven states have carried out executions - Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas – and all seven have introduced varying degrees of secrecy around their execution drugs.
Amnesty said only 21 countries were recorded as having carried out executions in 2012, the same as in 2011, but down from 28 countries a decade earlier.
Witnesses say Syrian forces attacked with helicopter gunships and tanks, before pro-government shabiha militiamen carried out execution-style killings.
