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Louisiana has been an anomaly in America’s death belt. Unlike neighboring states like Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama, it has not carried out an execution in 15 years.

Today, there are 63 people on Louisiana’s death row, well below the death row populations in Alabama and Texas, but almost twice the size of Mississippi’s. The last time a new death sentence was handed down was Feb. 10, 2023, after Kyle Joekel was convicted of the 2012 murders of two sheriff’s deputies.

2010 was the last time the state put someone to death, and, in that instance, the inmate chose to waive his appeals and “volunteered” for his own execution. The last involuntary execution occurred in 2002.

All that is now set to change. Earlier this month Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry announced that the state would start carrying out executions again.

“For too long, Louisiana has failed to uphold the promises made to victims of our State’s most violent crimes,” Landry claimed. “But that failure of leadership by previous administrations is over. The time for broken promises has ended; we will carry out these sentences, and justice will be dispensed.”

Landry’s decision is significant in part because until recently, Louisiana was part of a group I call the death penalty “swing states”—states that have the death penalty on the books but have not used it for a long time.

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That group of states—which includes California, Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, Nevada, Montana, Pennsylvania, and Utah—holds the key to capital punishment’s future in this country. And if more of them follow Louisiana’s example, then executions, which have declined significantly over the past several decades, will again become a regular occurrence in this country.

© Slate