In the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

capital punishment Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...

is a legal penalty throughout the country at the federal level, in 27 states, and in

American Samoa American Samoa ( sm, Amerika Sāmoa, ; also ' or ') is an unincorporated territory of the United States located in the South Pacific Ocean, southeast of the island country of Samoa. Its location is centered on . It is east of the Internatio ...

. It is also a legal penalty for some military offenses. Capital punishment has been abolished in 23 states and in the federal capital, Washington, D.C. Capital punishment is, in practice, only applied for

aggravated murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the c ...

. Although it is a legal penalty in 27 states, only 20 states have the ability to execute death sentences, with the other seven, as well as the federal government, being subject to different types of moratoriums. The existence of capital punishment in the United States can be traced to early colonial Virginia. However, the unique nature of capital punishment being removed and reinstated into law throughout American history at different points in time is related to and aligns with the United States' racial history and its enslavement then prejudice towards Black Americans''.'' Along with

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the no ...

, and

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

, the United States is one of five advanced democracies and the only

Western nation The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania.

that applies the death penalty regularly. It is one of 54 countries worldwide applying it, and was the first to develop

lethal injection Lethal injection is the practice of injecting one or more drugs into a person (typically a barbiturate, paralytic, and potassium solution) for the express purpose of causing rapid death. The main application for this procedure is capital puni ...

as a method of execution, which has since been adopted by five other countries. The

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

has since abolished executions, and

Guatemala Guatemala ( ; ), officially the Republic of Guatemala ( es, República de Guatemala, links=no), is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico; to the northeast by Belize and the Caribbean; to the east by Hon ...

has done so for civil offenses, leaving the United States as one of four countries to still use this method (along with

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...

, and

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making ...

). It is common practice for the condemned to be administered sedatives prior to execution, regardless of the method used. There were no executions in the United States between 1967 and 1977. In 1972, the

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. Federal tribunals in the United States, federal court cases, and over Stat ...

struck down capital punishment statutes in '' Furman v. Georgia'', reducing all pending death sentences to life imprisonment at the time.Barry Latzer (2010), ''Death Penalty Cases: Leading U.S. Supreme Court Cases on Capital Punishment'', Elsevier, p. 37. Subsequently, a majority of states enacted new death penalty statutes, and the court affirmed the legality of capital punishment in the 1976 case '' Gregg v. Georgia''. Since then, more than 7,800 defendants have been sentenced to death; of these, more than 1,500 have been executed. At least 185 people who were sentenced to death since 1972 have since been exonerated, about 2.4% or one in 42.Dwyer-Moss, Jessica (2013). "Flawed Forensics and the Death Penalty: Junk Science and Potentially Wrongful Executions", ''Seattle Journal for Social Justice'': Vol. 11, Iss. 2, Article 10. p. 760. As of December 16, 2020, 2,591 convicts are still on death row. The

Trump administration Donald Trump's tenure as the List of presidents of the United States, 45th president of the United States began with Inauguration of Donald Trump, his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican Party ...

's Department of Justice announced its plans to resume executions for federal crimes in 2019. On July 14, 2020, Daniel Lewis Lee became the first inmate executed by the federal government since 2003. , there were 44 inmates on federal death row. Thirteen federal death row inmates have been executed since federal executions resumed in July 2020. The last and most recent federal execution was of Dustin Higgs, who was executed on January 16, 2021. Higgs' execution was also the last under the presidency of Donald Trump. On July 1, 2021, Attorney General

Merrick Garland Merrick Brian Garland (born November 13, 1952) is an American lawyer and jurist serving since March 2021 as the 86th United States attorney general. He previously served as a U.S. circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of ...

announced that a moratorium on the Federal death penalty was being reinstated. The Human Rights Measurement Initiative gives the US a score of 5.6 out of 10 for the right to freedom from the death penalty.

History

Pre-''Furman'' history

The first recorded death sentence in the British North American colonies was carried out in 1608 on Captain George Kendall, who was executed by firing squad at the Jamestown colony for spying on behalf of the Spanish government. Executions in colonial America were also carried out by

hanging Hanging is the suspension of a person by a noose or ligature around the neck.Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Hanging as method of execution is unknown, as method of suicide from 1325. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' states that hanging ...

. The hangman's noose was one of the various banishments the

Puritans The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. ...

of the

Massachusetts Bay Colony The Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630–1691), more formally the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, was an English settlement on the east coast of North America around the Massachusetts Bay, the northernmost of the several colonies later reorganized as th ...

applied to enforce religious and intellectual conformity on the whole community. The Bill of Rights adopted in 1789 included the Eighth Amendment which prohibited

cruel and unusual punishment Cruel and unusual punishment is a phrase in common law describing punishment that is considered unacceptable due to the suffering, pain, or humiliation it inflicts on the person subjected to the sanction. The precise definition varies by jurisd ...

. The Fifth Amendment was drafted with language implying a possible use of the death penalty, requiring a grand jury indictment for "capital crime" and a due process of law for deprivation of "life" by the government. The Fourteenth Amendment adopted in 1868 also requires a due process of law for deprivation of life by any states. The ''Espy file'', compiled by

M. Watt Espy Major Watt Espy, Jr. (March 2, 1933 – August 13, 2009) was a researcher and expert on capital punishment in the United States. Espy, a resident of Headland, Alabama, attended the University of Alabama where he was a member of the Phi Sigma Kapp ...

and John Ortiz Smykla, lists 15,269 people executed in the United States and its predecessor colonies between 1608 and 1991. From 1930 to 2002, there were 4,661 executions in the U.S., about two-thirds of them in the first 20 years.Department of Justice
of the United States of America Additionally, the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, ...

executed 135 soldiers between 1916 and 1961 (the most recent).

Early abolition movement

Three states abolished the death penalty for murder during the 19th century:

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and t ...

(which has never executed a prisoner since achieving statehood, and which is the first government in the English-speaking world to abolish capital punishment), in 1847,

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

, in 1853 and

Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and nor ...

, in 1887.

Rhode Island Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the List of U.S. states by area, smallest U.S. state by area and the List of states and territories of the United States ...

is also a state with a long abolitionist background, having repealed the death penalty in 1852, though it was theoretically available for murder committed by a prisoner between 1872 and 1984. Other states which abolished the death penalty for murder before '' Gregg v. Georgia'' include

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over t ...

in 1911,

Vermont Vermont () is a U.S. state, state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York (state), New York to the west, and the Provin ...

in 1964,

Iowa Iowa () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wiscon ...

and

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the ...

in 1965, and

North Dakota North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minnesota to the east, ...

in 1973.

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

abolished the death penalty in 1948 and

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U ...

in 1957, both before their statehood.

Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and unincorporated ...

repealed it in 1929 and the

District of Columbia ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle (Washington, D.C.), Logan Circle, Jefferson Memoria ...

in 1981. Arizona and Oregon abolished the death penalty by popular vote in 1916 and 1964 respectively, but both reinstated it, again by popular vote, some years later; Arizona reinstated the death penalty in 1918 and Oregon in 1978. In Oregon, the measure reinstating the death penalty was overturned by the

Oregon Supreme Court The Oregon Supreme Court (OSC) is the highest state court in the U.S. state of Oregon. The only court that may reverse or modify a decision of the Oregon Supreme Court is the Supreme Court of the United States. Puerto Rico and Michigan are the only two U.S. jurisdictions to have explicitly prohibited capital punishment in their constitutions: in 1952 and 1964, respectively.

Constitutional law developments

Capital punishment was used by only 5 of 50 states in 2020. They were Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas. Government executions, as reported by

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and s ...

, took place in only 20 of the world's 195 countries. The Federal government, however, which had not executed for 16 years prior, did so in 2020, pushed by Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr. Executions for various crimes, especially murder and rape, occurred from the creation of the United States up to the beginning of the 1960s. Until then, "save for a few mavericks, no one gave any credence to the possibility of ending the death penalty by judicial interpretation of constitutional law", according to abolitionist Hugo Bedau. The possibility of challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty became progressively more realistic after the

decided on '' Trop v. Dulles'' in 1958. The Supreme Court declared explicitly, for the first time, that the Eighth Amendment's

clause must draw its meaning from the "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society", rather than from its original meaning. Also in the 1932 case ''

Powell v. Alabama ''Powell v. Alabama'', 287 U.S. 45 (1932), was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court reversed the convictions of nine young black men for allegedly raping two white women on a freight train near Scottsboro, Alabama. T ...

'', the court made the first step of what would later be called "death is different" jurisprudence, when it held that any indigent defendant was entitled to a court-appointed attorney in capital cases – a right that was only later extended to non-capital defendants in 1963, with ''

Gideon v. Wainwright ''Gideon v. Wainwright'', 372 U.S. 335 (1963), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires U.S. states to provide attorneys to criminal defendants who are unable to ...

''.

Capital punishment suspended (1972)

In ''Furman v. Georgia'', the U.S. Supreme Court considered a group of consolidated cases. The lead case involved an individual convicted under Georgia's death penalty statute, which featured a "unitary trial" procedure in which the jury was asked to return a verdict of guilt or innocence and, simultaneously, determine whether the defendant would be punished by death or life imprisonment. The last pre-''Furman'' execution was that of Luis Monge on June 2, 1967. In a 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court struck down the impositions of the death penalty in each of the consolidated cases as unconstitutional in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the

United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the natio ...

. The Supreme Court has never ruled the death penalty to be ''per se'' unconstitutional. The five justices in the majority did not produce a common opinion or rationale for their decision, however, and agreed only on a short statement announcing the result. The narrowest opinions, those of

Byron White Byron "Whizzer" Raymond White (June 8, 1917 April 15, 2002) was an American professional football player and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1962 until his retirement in 1993. Born and raised in Colo ...

and

Potter Stewart Potter Stewart (January 23, 1915 – December 7, 1985) was an American lawyer and judge who served as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1958 to 1981. During his tenure, he made major contributions to, among other areas ...

, expressed generalized concerns about the inconsistent application of the death penalty across a variety of cases, but did not exclude the possibility of a constitutional death penalty law. Stewart and William O. Douglas worried explicitly about racial discrimination in enforcement of the death penalty. Thurgood Marshall and William J. Brennan Jr. expressed the opinion that the death penalty was proscribed absolutely by the Eighth Amendment as cruel and unusual punishment. This decision was reached by the suspicion that many states, particularly in the South, were using capital punishment as a form of legal lynching of African-American males, inasmuch as almost all executions for non-homicidal rape in the Southern states involved a black perpetrator, and this suspicion was fueled by cases such as the Martinsville Seven, when seven African-American men were executed by Virginia in 1951 for the gang rape of a white woman. The ''Furman'' decision caused all death sentences pending at the time to be reduced to life imprisonment, and was described by scholars as a "legal bombshell". The next day, columnist

Barry Schweid Barry Schweid (July 30, 1932 – December 10, 2015) was an American journalist. As a correspondent for the Associated Press (AP), he reported on politics and international diplomacy from the 1950s until his retirement in 2012. Schweid was born in ...

wrote that it was "unlikely" that the death penalty could exist anymore in the United States.

Capital punishment reinstated (1976)

Panorama of United States Supreme Court Building at Dusk

Instead of abandoning capital punishment, 37 states enacted new death penalty statutes that attempted to address the concerns of White and Stewart in ''Furman''. Some states responded by enacting mandatory death penalty statutes which prescribed a sentence of death for anyone convicted of certain forms of murder. White had hinted that such a scheme would meet his constitutional concerns in his ''Furman'' opinion. Other states adopted "bifurcated" trial and sentencing procedures, with various procedural limitations on the jury's ability to pronounce a death sentence designed to limit juror discretion. On July 2, 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court decided '' Gregg v. Georgia'' and upheld 7–2 a Georgia procedure in which the trial of capital crimes was bifurcated into guilt-innocence and sentencing phases. At the first proceeding, the jury decides the defendant's guilt; if the defendant is innocent or otherwise not convicted of first-degree murder, the death penalty will not be imposed. At the second hearing, the jury determines whether certain statutory aggravating factors exist, whether any mitigating factors exist, and, in many jurisdictions, weigh the aggravating and mitigating factors in assessing the ultimate penalty – either death or life in prison, either with or without parole. The same day, in '' Woodson v. North Carolina'' and '' Roberts v. Louisiana'', the court struck down 5–4 statutes providing a mandatory death sentence. Executions resumed on January 17, 1977, when

Gary Gilmore Gary Mark Gilmore (born Faye Robert Coffman; December 4, 1940 – January 17, 1977) was an American criminal who gained international attention for demanding the implementation of his death sentence for two murders he had admitted to committing ...

went before a

firing squad Execution by firing squad, in the past sometimes called fusillading (from the French ''fusil'', rifle), is a method of capital punishment, particularly common in the military and in times of war. Some reasons for its use are that firearms are ...

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its ...

. Although hundreds of individuals were sentenced to death in the United States during the 1970s and early 1980s, only ten people besides Gilmore (who had waived all of his appeal rights) were actually executed prior to 1984. Following the decision, the use of capital punishment in the United States soared. This was in contrast to trends in other parts of advanced industrial democracies where the use of capital punishment declined or was prohibited. Forty-seven European States, including Russia, are members of the

Council of Europe The Council of Europe (CoE; french: Conseil de l'Europe, ) is an international organisation founded in the wake of World War II to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe. Founded in 1949, it has 46 member states, with a p ...

, and they all comply with the European Convention of Human Rights which prohibits capital punishment. The last execution in the UK took place in 1964, and in 1977 in France.

Supreme Court narrows capital offenses

In 1977, the Supreme Court's ''

Coker v. Georgia ''Coker v. Georgia'', 433 U.S. 584 (1977), held that the death penalty for rape of an adult woman was grossly disproportionate and excessive punishment, and therefore unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. A few s ...

'' decision barred the death penalty for rape of an adult woman. Previously, the death penalty for rape of an adult had been gradually phased out in the United States, and at the time of the decision, Georgia and the Federal government were the only two jurisdictions to still retain the death penalty for this offense. In the 1980 case ''

Godfrey v. Georgia ''Godfrey v. Georgia'', 446 U.S. 420 (1980), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a death sentence could not be granted for a murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or vali ...

'', the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that murder can be punished by death only if it involves a narrow and precise aggravating factor. The U.S. Supreme Court has placed two major restrictions on the use of the death penalty. First, the case of '' Atkins v. Virginia'', decided on June 20, 2002, held that the execution of intellectually disabled inmates is unconstitutional. Second, in 2005, the court's decision in '' Roper v. Simmons'' struck down executions for offenders under the age of 18 at the time of the crime. In the 2008 case '' Kennedy v. Louisiana'', the court also held 5–4 that the death penalty is unconstitutional when applied to non-homicidal crimes against the person, including

child rape Child sexual abuse (CSA), also called child molestation, is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent uses a child for sexual stimulation. Forms of child sexual abuse include engaging in sexual activities with a child (whethe ...

. Only two death row inmates (both in Louisiana) were affected by the decision. Nevertheless, the ruling came less than five months before the 2008 presidential election and was criticized by both major party candidates

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...

and

John McCain John Sidney McCain III (August 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018) was an American politician and United States Navy officer who served as a United States senator from Arizona from 1987 until his death in 2018. He previously served two te ...

Repeal movements and legal challenges

In 2004, New York's and

Kansas Kansas () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its Capital city, capital is Topeka, Kansas, Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita, Kansas, Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebras ...

' capital sentencing schemes were struck down by their respective states' highest courts. Kansas successfully appealed the Kansas Supreme Court decision to the United States Supreme Court, which reinstated the statute in '' Kansas v. Marsh'' (2006), holding it did not violate the U.S. Constitution. The decision of the New York Court of Appeals was based on the state constitution, making unavailable any appeal. The state lower house has since blocked all attempts to reinstate the death penalty by adopting a valid sentencing scheme. In 2016,

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent ...

's death penalty statute was also struck down by its state supreme court. In 2007,

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delawa ...

became the first state to repeal the death penalty by legislative vote since ''Gregg v. Georgia'', followed by

New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque, New Mexico, Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Albuquerque metropolitan area, Tiguex , Offi ...

in 2009,

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rock ...

in 2011,

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the ...

in 2012, and

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean t ...

in 2013. The repeals were not retroactive, but in New Jersey, Illinois and Maryland, governors commuted all death sentences after enacting the new law. In Connecticut, the

Connecticut Supreme Court The Connecticut Supreme Court, formerly known as the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors, is the highest court in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It consists of a Chief Justice and six Associate Justices. The seven justices sit in Hartford, a ...

ruled in 2015 that the repeal must be retroactive. In New Mexico, capital punishment for certain offenses is still possible for National Guard members in Title 32 status under the state's Code of Military Justice (NMSA 20–12), and for capital offenses committed prior to the repeal of the state's death penalty statute.

Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the sout ...

's legislature also passed a repeal in 2015, but a

referendum A referendum (plural: referendums or less commonly referenda) is a Direct democracy, direct vote by the Constituency, electorate on a proposal, law, or political issue. This is in contrast to an issue being voted on by a Representative democr ...

campaign gathered enough signatures to suspend it. Capital punishment was reinstated by popular vote on November 8, 2016. The same day,

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

's electorate defeated a proposal to repeal the death penalty, and adopted another initiative to speed up its appeal process. On October 11, 2018, Washington state became the 20th state to abolish capital punishment when its state Supreme Court deemed the death penalty unconstitutional on the grounds of racial bias. New Hampshire became the 21st state to abolish capital punishment on May 30, 2019, when its state senate overrode Governor Sununu's veto by a vote of 16–8. Colorado became the 22nd state to abolish capital punishment when governor Jared Polis signed a repeal bill on March 23, 2020, and commuted all existing death sentences in the state to life without parole. Virginia became the 23rd state to abolish capital punishment, and the first Southern state to do so when governor Ralph Northam signed a repeal bill on March 24, 2021, and commuted all existing death sentences in the state to life without parole. Since ''Furman'', 11 states have organized popular votes dealing with the death penalty through the initiative and referendum process. All resulted in a vote for reinstating it, rejecting its abolition, expanding its application field, specifying in the state constitution that it is not unconstitutional, or expediting the appeal process in capital cases.

States that have abolished the death penalty

A total of 23 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have abolished the death penalty for all crimes. Below is a table of the states and the date that the state abolished the death penalty. Michigan became the first English-speaking territory in the world to abolish capital punishment in 1847. Although treason remained a crime punishable by the death penalty in Michigan despite the 1847 abolition, no one was ever executed under that law, and Michigan's 1962 Constitutional Convention codified that the death penalty was fully abolished. Vermont has abolished the death penalty for all crimes, but has an invalid death penalty statue for treason. When it abolished the death penalty in 2019, New Hampshire explicitly did not commute the death sentence of the sole person remaining on the state's death row. Capital Punishment in the United States by State Since 1970

Modern era

In 1982, Texas carried out the first execution by lethal injection in world history and lethal injection subsequently became the preferred method throughout the country, displacing the electric chair. From 1976 to 8 December 2016, there were 1,533 executions, of which 1,349 were by lethal injection, 163 by electrocution, 11 by gas inhalation, 3 by hanging, and 3 by firing squad. The South had the great majority of these executions, with 1,249; there were 190 in the Midwest, 86 in the West, and only 4 in the Northeast. No state in the Northeast has conducted an execution since

, now abolitionist, in 2005. The state of

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

alone conducted 571 executions, over 1/3 of the total; the states of Texas,

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are ...

(now abolitionist), and Oklahoma combined make up over half the total, with 802 executions between them. 17 executions have been conducted by the federal government. Executions increased in frequency until 1999; 98 prisoners were executed that year. Since 1999, the number of executions has greatly decreased, and the 17 executions in 2020 were the fewest since 1991. A 2016 poll conducted by Pew Research, found that support nationwide for the death penalty in the U.S. had fallen below 50% for the first time since the beginning of the post-Gregg era. The death penalty became an issue during the 1988 presidential election. It came up in the October 13, 1988, debate between the two presidential nominees George H. W. Bush and

Michael Dukakis Michael Stanley Dukakis (; born November 3, 1933) is an American retired lawyer and politician who served as governor of Massachusetts from 1975 to 1979 and again from 1983 to 1991. He is the longest-serving governor in Massachusetts history ...

, when Bernard Shaw, the moderator of the debate, asked Dukakis, "Governor, if Kitty Dukakis is wifewere raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?" Dukakis replied, "No, I don't, and I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life. I don't see any evidence that it's a deterrent, and I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime." Bush was elected, and many, including Dukakis himself, cite the statement as the beginning of the end of his campaign. In 1996,

Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...

passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act to streamline the appeal process in capital cases. The bill was signed into law by President

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again ...

, who had endorsed capital punishment during his 1992 presidential campaign. A study found that at least 34 of the 749 executions carried out in the U.S. between 1977 and 2001, or 4.5%, involved "unanticipated problems or delays that caused, at least arguably, unnecessary agony for the prisoner or that reflect gross incompetence of the executioner". The rate of these "botched executions" remained steady over the period. A study published in ''

The Lancet ''The Lancet'' is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal and one of the oldest of its kind. It is also the world's highest-impact academic journal. It was founded in England in 1823. The journal publishes original research articles ...

'' in 2005 found that in 43% of cases of lethal injection, the blood level of

hypnotic Hypnotic (from Greek ''Hypnos'', sleep), or soporific drugs, commonly known as sleeping pills, are a class of (and umbrella term for) psychoactive drugs whose primary function is to induce sleep (or surgical anesthesiaWhen used in anesthesia ...

s in the prisoner was insufficient to ensure unconsciousness. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court ruled in 2008 ('' Baze v. Rees''), again in 2015 (''

Glossip v. Gross ''Glossip v. Gross'', 576 U.S. 863 (2015), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held, 5–4, that lethal injections using midazolam to kill prisoners convicted of capital crimes do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment un ...

''), and a third time in 2019 (''

Bucklew v. Precythe ''Bucklew v. Precythe'', 587 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the standards for challenging methods of capital punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. In a 5–4 decision, the Cour ...

''), that lethal injection does not constitute

. On July 25, 2019, Attorney General William Barr ordered the resumption of federal executions after a 16-year hiatus, and set five execution dates for December 2019 and January 2020. After the Supreme Court upheld a stay on these executions, the stay was lifted in June 2020 and four executions were rescheduled for July and August 2020. The federal government executed Daniel Lewis Lee on July 14, 2020. He became the first convict executed by the federal government since 2003. Before Trump's term ended in January 2021, the federal government carried out a total of 13 executions.

Women's history and capital punishment

In 1632, 24 years after the first recorded male execution in the colonies, Jane Champion became the first woman known to have been lawfully executed. She was sentenced to death by hanging after she was convicted of infanticide; around two-thirds of women executed in the 17th and early 18th centuries were convicted of child murder. A married woman, it is not known whether Champion's illicit lover, William Gallopin, also convicted of their child's murder, was also executed, although it appears he was so sentenced. For the Puritans, infanticide was the worst form of murder. Women accounted for just one fifth of all executions between 1632 and 1759, in the

colonial United States The colonial history of the United States covers the history of European colonization of North America from the early 17th century until the incorporation of the Thirteen Colonies into the United States after the Revolutionary War. In the ...

. Women were more likely to be acquitted, and the relatively low number of executions of women may have been impacted by the scarcity of female laborers. Slavery was not yet widespread in the 17th century mainland and planters relied mostly on Irish indentured servants. To maintain subsistence levels in those days everyone had to do farm work, including women. The second half of the 17th century saw the executions of 14 women and 6 men who were accused of witchcraft during the witch hunt hysteria and the Salem Witch Trials. While both men and women were executed, 80% of the accusations were towards women, so the list of executions disproportionately affected men by a margin of 6 (actual) to 4 (expected), i.e. 50% more men were executed than expected from the percentage of accused who were men. Other notable female executions include

Mary Surratt Mary Elizabeth Jenkins SurrattCashin, p. 287.Steers, 2010, p. 516. (1820 or May 1823 – July 7, 1865) was an American boarding house owner in Washington, D.C., who was convicted of taking part in the conspiracy which led to the assassi ...

, Margie Velma Barfield and

Wanda Jean Allen Wanda Jean Allen (August 17, 1959 – January 11, 2001) was sentenced to death in 1989 for the murder of Gloria Jean Leathers, 29, her longtime girlfriend. Allen was the first black woman to be executed in the United States since 1954. She was the ...

. Mary Surratt was executed by hanging in 1865 after being convicted of co-conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Margie Velma Barfield was convicted of murder and when she was executed by lethal injection in 1984, she became the first woman to be executed since the ban on capital punishment was lifted in 1976. Wanda Jean Allen was convicted of murder in 1989 and had a high-profile execution by lethal injection in January 2001. She was the first black woman to be executed in the US since 1954. Allen's lawyers did not deny her guilt, but claimed that prosecutors capitalized on her low IQ, race and homosexuality in their representations of her as a murderer at trial. The tactic did not work. The federal government executes women infrequently.

Ethel Rosenberg Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) and Ethel Rosenberg (; September 28, 1915 – June 19, 1953) were American citizens who were convicted of spying on behalf of the Soviet Union. The couple were convicted of providing top-secret i ...

, convicted of espionage, was executed in the electric chair on June 19, 1953, and Bonnie Brown Heady, convicted of kidnapping and murder, was executed in the gas chamber later that same year on December 18. Since Heady, only one more woman has been executed: Lisa Montgomery, convicted of killing a pregnant woman and cutting out and kidnapping her baby, by lethal injection in

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th ...

on January 13, 2021. Her execution had been stayed while her lawyers argued that she had mental health issues, but the Supreme Court lifted the stay.

Juvenile capital punishment

In 1642, the first ever juvenile, Thomas Graunger, was sentenced to death in Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts, for bestiality. Since then, at least 361 other juveniles have been sentenced to the death penalty. ''Kent v. United States'' (1966), turned the tides for juvenile capital punishment sentencing when it limited the waiver discretion juvenile courts had. Before this case, juvenile courts had the freedom to waiver juvenile cases to criminal courts without a hearing, which did not make the waiving process consistent across states. Discussions about abolishing the death penalty started occurring between 1983 and 1986. In 1987, ''

Thompson v. Oklahoma ''Thompson v. Oklahoma'', 487 U.S. 815 (1988), was the first case since the moratorium on capital punishment was lifted in the United States in which the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of a minor on grounds of "cruel and unusual ...

'', the Supreme Court threw away William Wayne Thompson's death sentence due to it being cruel and unusual punishment, as he was 15 years old at the time of the crime he committed; the judgment established that "evolving standards of decency" made it inappropriate to apply the death penalty for people under 16 years old at the time of their capital crime, although ''Thompson'' held that it was still constitutional to sentence juveniles 16 years or older to the death penalty. It was not until '' Roper v. Simmons'' that the juvenile death penalty was abolished due to the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

finding that the execution of juveniles is in conflict with the Eighth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment, which deal with cruel and unusual punishment. Prior to completely abolishing the juvenile death penalty in 2005, any juvenile aged 16 years or older could be sentenced to death in some states, the last of whom was

Scott Hain Scott Allen Hain (June 2, 1970 – April 3, 2003) was the last person executed in the United States for crimes committed as a juvenile. Hain was executed by Oklahoma for a double murder–kidnapping he committed when he was 17 years old. Crime ...

, executed in Oklahoma in 2003 for burning two people to death in a robbery at age 17. Prior to ''Roper'', there were 71 people on death row in the United States for crimes committed as juveniles. Since 2005, there have been no executions nor discussion of executing juveniles in the United States.

Execution statistics

Executions per year in the United States, 1977-2020

Capital crimes

Aggravated murder

Aggravating factors for seeking capital punishment of murder vary greatly among death penalty states. California has twenty-two. Some aggravating circumstances are nearly universal, such as robbery-murder, murder involving

rape Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or ...

of the victim, and murder of an on-duty

police officer A police officer (also called a policeman and, less commonly, a policewoman) is a warranted law employee of a police force. In most countries, "police officer" is a generic term not specifying a particular rank. In some, the use of the ...

. Several states have included child murder to their list of aggravating factors, but the victim's age under which the murder is punishable by death varies. In 2011, Texas raised this age from six to ten. In some states, the high number of aggravating factors has been criticized on account of giving prosecutors too much discretion in choosing cases where they believe capital punishment is warranted. In California especially, an official commission proposed, in 2008, to reduce these factors to five (multiple murders, torture murder, murder of a police officer, murder committed in jail, and murder related to another felony). Columnist Charles Lane went further, and proposed that murder related to a felony other than rape should no longer be a capital crime when there is only one victim killed.

Aggravating factors in federal court

In order for a person to be eligible for a death sentence when convicted of aggravated first-degree murder, the jury or court (when there is not a jury) must determine at least one of sixteen aggravating factors that existed during the crime's commission. The following is a list of the 16 aggravating factors under federal law. # Murder while committing another felony. # Offender was convicted of a separate felony involving a firearm prior to the aggravated murder. # Being convicted of a separate felony where death or life imprisonment was authorized prior to the aggravated murder. # Being convicted of any separate violent felony prior to the aggravated murder. # The offender put the lives of at least 1 or more other persons in danger of death during the commission of the crime. # Offender committed the crime in an especially cruel, heinous, or depraved manner. # Offender committed the crime for financial gain. # Offender committed the crime for monetary gain. # The murder was premeditated, involved planning in order to be carried out, or the offender showed early signs of committing the crime, such as keeping a journal of the crime's details and posting things on the Internet. # Offender was previously convicted of at least two drug offenses. # The victim would not have been able to defend themselves while being attacked. # Offender was previously convicted of a federal drug offense. # Offender was involved in a long-term business of selling drugs to minors. # A high-ranking official was murdered, such as the

President of the United States The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the Federal government of the United States#Executive branch, executive branch of the Federal gove ...

, the leader of another country, or a police officer. # Offender was previously convicted of sexual assault or child rape. # During the crime's commission, the offender killed or tried to kill multiple people.

Crimes against the state

The opinion of the court in ''Kennedy v. Louisiana'' says that the ruling does not apply to "treason, espionage, terrorism, and drug kingpin activity, which are offenses against the State". Since no one is on death row for such offenses, the court has yet to rule on the constitutionality of the death penalty applied for them.

Treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...

espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information ( intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tang ...

and large-scale drug trafficking are all capital crimes under federal law. Treason is also punishable by death in six states (Arkansas, California, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina). Large-scale drug trafficking is punishable by death in two states (Florida and Missouri), and aircraft hijacking in two others (Georgia and Mississippi). Vermont has an invalidated pre-''Furman'' statute allowing the electric chair for treason despite abolishing capital punishment in 1965.

Legal process

The legal administration of the death penalty in the United States typically involves five critical steps: (1)

prosecutor A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the common law adversarial system or the civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the case in a criminal tria ...

ial decision to seek the death penalty (2) sentencing, (3) direct review, (4) state collateral review, and (5) federal

habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, ...

. Clemency, through which the

Governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university * President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...

of the

jurisdiction Jurisdiction (from Latin 'law' + 'declaration') is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, areas of jurisdiction apply to local, state, and federal levels. J ...

can unilaterally reduce or abrogate a death sentence, is an

executive Executive ( exe., exec., execu.) may refer to: Role or title * Executive, a senior management role in an organization ** Chief executive officer (CEO), one of the highest-ranking corporate officers (executives) or administrators ** Executive di ...

rather than judicial process.

Decision to seek the death penalty

While judges in criminal cases can usually impose a harsher prison sentence than the one demanded by prosecution, the death penalty can be handed down only if the accuser has specifically decided to seek it. In the decades since '' Furman'', new questions have emerged about whether or not prosecutorial arbitrariness has replaced sentencing arbitrariness. A study by Pepperdine University School of Law published in '' Temple Law Review'', surveyed the decision-making process among prosecutors in various states. The authors found that prosecutors' capital punishment filing decisions are marked by local "idiosyncrasies", and that wide prosecutorial discretion remains because of overly broad criteria. California law, for example, has 22 "special circumstances", making nearly all first-degree murders potential capital cases. A proposed remedy against prosecutorial arbitrariness is to transfer the prosecution of capital cases to the state attorney general. In 2017, Florida governor Rick Scott removed all capital cases from local prosecutor

Aramis Ayala Aramis Ayala (born February 2, 1975) is an American politician and prosecutor who was the state attorney for the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida. She was elected in November 2016, and served as the chief prosecutor from 2017 to 2021. In M ...

because she decided to never seek the death penalty no matter the gravity of the crime.

Sentencing

Of the 27 states with the death penalty, 25 require the sentence to be decided by the

jury A jury is a sworn body of people (jurors) convened to hear evidence and render an impartial verdict (a finding of fact on a question) officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment. Juries developed in England d ...

, and 24 require a unanimous decision by the jury. Two states do not use juries in death penalty cases. In Nebraska the sentence is decided by a three-judge panel, which must unanimously agree on death, and the defendant is sentenced to life imprisonment if one of the judges is opposed. Montana is the only state where the trial judge decides the sentence alone. The only state which does not require a unanimous jury decision is Alabama. At least 10 jurors must concur, and a retrial happens if the jury deadlocks. In all states in which the jury is involved, only death-qualified prospective jurors can be selected in such a jury, to exclude both people who will always vote for the death sentence and those who are categorically opposed to it. However, the states differ on what happens if the penalty phase results in a hung jury: * In four states (Arizona, California, Kentucky and Nevada), a retrial of the penalty phase will be conducted before a different jury (the common-law rule for mistrial). * In two states (Indiana and Missouri), the judge will decide the sentence. * In the remaining states, a hung jury results in a

life sentence Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted people are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives or indefinitely until pardoned, paroled, or otherwise commuted to a fixed term. Crimes ...

, even if only one juror opposed death. Federal law also provides that outcome. The first outcome is referred as the "true unanimity" rule, while the third has been criticized as the "single-juror veto" rule.

Direct review

If a defendant is sentenced to death at the trial level, the case then goes into a direct review.See, e.g.
18 U.S.C. § 3595.
("In a case in which a sentence of death is imposed, the sentence shall be subject to review by the court of appeals upon appeal by the defendant.") The direct review process is a typical legal appeal. An

appellate court A court of appeals, also called a court of appeal, appellate court, appeal court, court of second instance or second instance court, is any court of law that is empowered to hear an appeal of a trial court or other lower tribunal. In much of ...

examines the record of evidence presented in the trial court and the law that the lower court applied and decides whether the decision was legally sound or not. Direct review of a capital sentencing hearing will result in one of three outcomes. If the appellate court finds that no significant legal errors occurred in the capital sentencing hearing, the appellate court will affirm the judgment, or let the sentence stand. If the appellate court finds that significant legal errors did occur, then it will reverse the judgment, or nullify the sentence and order a new capital sentencing hearing.Poland v. Arizona, 476 U.S. 147 152–154 (1986)
Lastly, if the appellate court finds that no reasonable juror could find the defendant eligible for the death penalty, a rarity, then it will order the defendant acquitted, or not guilty, of the crime for which he/she was given the death penalty, and order him sentenced to the next most severe punishment for which the offense is eligible. About 60 percent survive the process of direct review intact.

State collateral review

At times when a death sentence is affirmed on direct review, supplemental methods to attack the judgment, though less familiar than a typical appeal, do remain. These supplemental remedies are considered collateral review, that is, an avenue for upsetting judgments that have become otherwise final. Where the prisoner received his death sentence in a state-level trial, as is usually the case, the first step in collateral review is state collateral review, which is often called state habeas corpus. (If the case is a federal death penalty case, it proceeds immediately from direct review to federal habeas corpus.) Although all states have some type of collateral review, the process varies widely from state to state. Generally, the purpose of these collateral proceedings is to permit the prisoner to challenge his sentence on grounds that could not have been raised reasonably at trial or on direct review. Most often, these are claims, such as ineffective assistance of counsel, which requires the court to consider new evidence outside the original trial record, something courts may not do in an ordinary appeal. State collateral review, though an important step in that it helps define the scope of subsequent review through federal habeas corpus, is rarely successful in and of itself. Only around 6 percent of death sentences are overturned on state collateral review.

Eric M. Freedman Eric Mark Freedman is an American legal scholar and Siggi B. Wilzig Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Rights at Hofstra University Hofstra University is a private university in Hempstead, New York. It is Long Island's largest private ...

, "Giarratano is a Scarecrow: The Right to Counsel in State Postconviction Proceedings", 91 Cornell L. Rev. 1079, 1097 (2006). In Virginia, state habeas corpus for condemned men are heard by the state supreme court under exclusive

original jurisdiction In common law legal systems original jurisdiction of a court is the power to hear a case for the first time, as opposed to appellate jurisdiction, when a higher court has the power to review a lower court's decision. India In India, the Su ...

since 1995, immediately after direct review by the same court. This avoids any proceeding before the lower courts, and is in part why Virginia has the shortest time on average between death sentence and execution (less than eight years) and has executed 113 offenders since 1976 with only five remaining on death row . To reduce litigation delays, other states require convicts to file their state collateral appeal before the completion of their direct appeal, or provide adjudication of direct and collateral attacks together in a "unitary review".

Federal ''habeas corpus''

After a death sentence is affirmed in state collateral review, the prisoner may file for federal ''

'', which is a unique type of lawsuit that can be brought in federal courts. Federal ''habeas corpus'' is a type of collateral review, and it is the only way that state prisoners may attack a death sentence in federal court (other than petitions for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court after both direct review and state collateral review). The scope of federal ''habeas corpus'' is governed by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), which restricted significantly its previous scope. The purpose of federal ''habeas corpus'' is to ensure that state courts, through the process of direct review and state collateral review, have done a reasonable job in protecting the prisoner's federal

constitutional right A constitutional right can be a prerogative or a duty, a power or a restraint of power, recognized and established by a sovereign state or union of states. Constitutional rights may be expressly stipulated in a national constitution, or they may ...

s. Prisoners may also use federal ''habeas corpus'' suits to bring forth new evidence that they are innocent of the crime, though to be a valid defense at this late stage in the process, evidence of innocence must be truly compelling. According to

, 21 percent of death penalty cases are reversed through federal ''habeas corpus''. James Liebman, a professor of law at Columbia Law School, stated in 1996 that his study found that when ''habeas corpus'' petitions in death penalty cases were traced from conviction to completion of the case, there was "a 40 percent success rate in all capital cases from 1978 to 1995". Similarly, a study by Ronald Tabak in a law review article puts the success rate in ''habeas corpus'' cases involving death row inmates even higher, finding that between "1976 and 1991, approximately 47 percent of the habeas petitions filed by death row inmates were granted". The different numbers are largely definitional, rather than substantive: Freedam's statistics looks at the percentage of all death penalty cases reversed, while the others look only at cases not reversed prior to ''habeas corpus'' review. A similar process is available for prisoners sentenced to death by the judgment of a federal court. The AEDPA also provides an expeditious ''habeas'' procedure in capital cases for states meeting several requirements set forth in it concerning counsel appointment for death row inmates. Under this program, federal ''habeas corpus'' for condemned prisoners would be decided in about three years from affirmance of the sentence on state collateral review. In 2006,

conferred the determination of whether a state fulfilled the requirements to the U.S. attorney general, with a possible appeal of the state to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. , the Department of Justice has still not granted any certifications.

Section 1983

If the federal court refuses to issue a writ of ''habeas corpus'', the death sentence ordinarily becomes final for all purposes. In recent times, however, prisoners have postponed execution through another avenue of federal litigation; the Civil Rights Act of 1871 – codified at – allows complainants to bring lawsuits against state actors to protect their federal constitutional and statutory rights. While direct appeals are normally limited to just one and automatically stay the execution of the death sentence, Section 1983 lawsuits are unlimited, but the petitioner will be granted a stay of execution only if the court believes he has a likelihood of success on the merits. Traditionally, Section 1983 was of limited use for a state prisoner under sentence of death because the Supreme Court has held that ''habeas corpus'', not Section 1983, is the only vehicle by which a state prisoner can challenge his judgment of death. In the 2006 ''

Hill v. McDonough ''Hill v. McDonough'', 547 U.S. 573 (2006), was a United States Supreme Court case challenging the use of lethal injection as a form of execution in the state of Florida. The Court ruled unanimously that a challenge to the method of execution as ...

'' case, however, the United States Supreme Court approved the use of Section 1983 as a vehicle for challenging a state's method of execution as

in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The theory is that a prisoner bringing such a challenge is not attacking directly his judgment of death, but rather the means by which that the judgment will be carried out. Therefore, the Supreme Court held in the ''Hill'' case that a prisoner can use Section 1983 rather than ''habeas corpus'' to bring the lawsuit. Yet, as Clarence Hill's own case shows, lower federal courts have often refused to hear suits challenging methods of execution on the ground that the prisoner brought the claim too late and only for the purposes of delay. Further, the Court's decision in '' Baze v. Rees'', upholding a lethal injection method used by many states, has narrowed the opportunity for relief through Section 1983.

Execution warrant

While the execution warrant is issued by the governor in several states, in the vast majority it is a judicial order, issued by a judge or by the state supreme court at the request of the prosecution. The warrant usually sets an execution day. Some states instead provide a longer period, such as a week-long or 10-day window to carry out the execution. This is designated to avoid issuing a new warrant in case of a last-minute stay of execution that would be vacated only few days or few hours later.

Distribution of sentences

In recent years there has been an average of one death sentence for every 200 murder convictions in the United States. Alabama has the highest ''per capita'' rate of death sentences. This is because Alabama was one of the few states that allowed judges to override a jury recommendation in favor of life imprisonment, a possibility it removed in March 2017. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the top three factors determining whether a convict gets a death sentence in a murder case are not aggravating factors, but instead the location the crime occurred (and thus whether it is in the jurisdiction of a prosecutor aggressively using the death penalty), the quality of legal defense, and the race of the victim (murder of white victims being punished more harshly).

Among states

The distribution of death sentences among states is loosely proportional to their populations and murder rates.

, which is the most populous state, also has the largest death row, with over 700 inmates.

Wyoming Wyoming () is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to t ...

, which is the least populous state, has only one condemned man. But executions are more frequent (and happen more quickly after sentencing) in conservative states.

, which is the second most populous state in the Union, carried out over 500 executions during the post-''Furman'' era, more than a third of the national total. California has carried out only 13 executions during the same period, and has carried out none since 2006.

Among races

Certain races within the United States are disproportionately incarcerated at higher rates than others. African Americans in the United States are disproportionately incarcerated in the prison system at higher rates compared to white Americans. The proportion of African Americans on

death row Death row, also known as condemned row, is a place in a prison that houses inmates awaiting execution after being convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution ...

compared to white Americans is no different.

Statistics

African Americans make up 41% of death row inmates. African Americans have made up 34% of those actually executed since 1976. This displays the racial disproportionality of African Americans subjected to the death penalty because African Americans only make up 13.6% of the total population of people in the United States. Twenty-one white offenders have been executed for the murder of a black person since 1976, compared to the 302 black offenders that have been executed for the murder of Racial_Demographic_of_Death_Row_inmates

a white person during that same period. Most individuals in charge of determining the verdict in death cases are white, as they make up 98% of all decision-makers regarding any death cases. There are 1,794 white district attorneys in U.S. death penalty states, while there are only 22 black district attorney's in these same states. A supporting fact discovered through examinations of racial disparities over the past twenty years concerning race and the death penalty found that in 96% of these reviews, there was "a pattern of either race-of-victim or race-of-defendant discrimination or both." 80% of all capital cases involve white victims, despite white people only making up approximately 50% of murder victims. 63.8% of white death row inmates, 72.8% of black death row inmates, 65.4% of Latino death row inmates, and 63.8% of Native American death row inmates – or approximately 67% of death row inmates overall – have a prior felony conviction. Approximately 13.5% of death row inmates are of Hispanic or Latino descent. In 2019, individuals identified as Hispanic and Latino Americans accounted for 5.5% of homicides. The death penalty exhortation rate for Hispanic and Latino Americans is 8.6%. Approximately 1.81% of death row inmates are of Asian descent.

Organizations against the death penalty for racial equity

= ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project

= The ACLU's Capital Punishment Project (CPP) is an anti-death penalty project that works toward the repeal of the death penalty in the U.S. through advocacy and education. The project highlights the racial discriminatory aspects regarding capital punishment and promotes both abolition and systemic reform of the death penalty through direct representation, strategic litigation, and systemic reform.

= Equal Justice USA

= Equal Justice USA is a national organization dedicated to healing, racial equity, and community safety in relation to criminal justice and violence. Their efforts spread wide and involve fundraising and hosting conventions to support communities of color. The organization is aimed towards people of color who have been disproportionately impacted by the death penalty. Some of their efforts include advocacy to end the death penalty, which they have helped to abolish in nine states.

Black Americans and capital punishment

Capital punishment in the United States has a strong correlation with the history of slavery and lynchings in the United States. States where slavery was legal before the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polici ...

also saw high numbers of lynchings of Black people by white mobs throughout the end of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century. These states include, but are not limited to Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. These states are also a part of the group of Southern states who introduced and accepted a new criminal justice system with

Black Codes The Black Codes, sometimes called the Black Laws, were laws which governed the conduct of African Americans (free and freed blacks). In 1832, James Kent wrote that "in most of the United States, there is a distinction in respect to political p ...

that would give them the power to control Black people after slavery was abolished in 1865. These same states with the highest accounted lynchings, statistically also have the highest rates of capital punishment sentences and executions today.

= Racial relationship between lynchings and capital punishment

= Once white plantation slaveowners lost full ownership of Blacks following the

Emancipation Proclamation The Emancipation Proclamation, officially Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War, Civil War. The Proclamation c ...

and then officially with the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865, they used lynchings, both legally under the security of

and illegally, to maintain their white dominance and threateningly prevent Blacks from challenging their subordinate place in society. Many Black men, women, and even kids, were sent to jail to participate in slave-like work while some others even faced capital punishment, often in the form of lynching, for their crimes because of these

and other unjust laws. These lynchings were able to be carried out particularly because many former Confederate soldiers held positions within southern police forces, as state officials, and even as judges. Even after the passing of the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which weakened the strength of Black Codes and supported the 14th Amendment, the lynching of Blacks by whites saw an increase in numbers. This is primarily due to the fact that during this

Reconstruction Reconstruction may refer to: Politics, history, and sociology * Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company *''Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...

time period, the terrorist hate group, the

Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Cat ...

(K.K.K.) was secretly created in 1865 by former Confederates and carried out mass terrorizations and lynchings of Black people. After the end of the Reconstruction in 1877, when federal troops were removed from southern states in which they assisted in upholding the 14th Amendment's promises of equal protection, Jim Crow laws began to gain traction within southern states and enforced segregation and the oppression of Black Americans in all facets of life. These Jim Crow laws were considered legal under the Supreme Court decision '' Plessy v. Ferguson'', and allowed for the unfair treatment and protection of lynchings all the way up until the

Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requi ...

. During and following the

Civil Rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life ...

era, different acts and laws prevented as many illegal lynchings by the general public from occurring in the United States, capital punishment became a popular, newly legalized way for racist white populations to control Black people and install fear in their daily lives. Based on the disproportionate number of Black Americans sentenced to death during the early and mid-20th century, often as a result of petty or unproved crimes, it became evident that capital punishment was a way whites could still get away with committing the same murders of Black people in an institutionally hidden way. Thus, in 1972, the Supreme Court ruled in '' Furman v. Georgia'' that capital punishment was unconstitutional. This decision only led to once again an increase in the illegal lynchings of Black people by the general public. Therefore, in 1976 the Supreme Court decision in '' Gregg v. Georgia'' upheld the death penalty and overturned ''Furman v. Georgia'' based on the fear that lynchings by the public would rise if the death penalty did not remain in place. Historical lynchings disproportionately affected Black people and capital punishment today still disproportionately affects Black people. Although the lynchings of Black people decreased in the late 1900s and early 2000s with the legality of capital punishment reinstated, lynching did not become a federal crime until 2022 under the Emmett Till Antilynching Act when President Biden signed it into law, over a hundred years after it was originally proposed. 21st century legal scholars, Civil Rights lawyers, and advocates, like Michelle Alexander, often refer to both past and modern police officers and officials of the United States' criminal justice system's as legalized, modern lynch mobs because they have the ability to sentence one to life in prison or with the death penalty under the law but with the jurisdiction of potentially incorporating their personal, racial biases. The ability for a Black person to be convicted to death, with the potential that racial bias was used in their sentencing, was upheld during the ''

McCleskey v. Kemp ''McCleskey v. Kemp'', 481 U.S. 279 (1987), is a United States Supreme Court case, in which the death penalty sentencing of Warren McCleskey for armed robbery and murder was upheld. The Court said the "racially disproportionate impact" in the Geor ...

'' court case in Georgia. Groups like the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund (LDF) have continuously worked and continue to work on abolishing capital punishment based on its historically racist associations with enslavement and lynching, and also its disproportionate impact on racial minority communities.

= Racial breakdown of sentences by state

= Capital punishment is still active in 27 states, which including the following: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wyoming. Of these, Oklahoma, Texas, Delaware, Missouri, and Alabama make up the top five states with the highest ''rate'' of executions per capita. However, Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, Florida, and Missouri are the top five states with the highest ''number'' of executions–Texas alone has imposed 570 executions since 1976. The racial makeup of the people sentenced to death reveals a disproportionate representation of Black people. Consider the following states with the highest execution rates per capita (defined as executions per 100,000 residents):

Top five states with the highest rates of execution per capita

*since 1976 **Death penalty is now abolished. ***Not applicable since the death penalty was abolished.

Texas

Capital punishment in Texas Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Texas for murder, and participation in a felony resulting in death if committed by an individual who has attained or is over the age of 18. In 1982, the state became the first juri ...

: Texas is the state with the highest number of cumulative executions since 1976. Black people make up about 45% of the current death row population in Texas, though only make up about 13% of the state's general population.

Oklahoma

Capital punishment in Oklahoma: Oklahoma is the state with the second highest number of cumulative executions since 1976. Black people make up 46% of death sentences in Oklahoma County, though only make up 16% of the county’s total population. It is also the only state that has 4 methods of execution, while most others only have 1 or 2 methods. These methods of execution include: lethal injection, nitrogen hypoxia, electrocution, and firing squad.

Alabama

Capital punishment in Alabama Capital punishment in Alabama is a legal penalty. The state has the highest per capita capital sentencing rate in the United States. In some years, its courts impose more death sentences than Texas, a state that has a population five times as la ...

: Alabama's death penalty sentences persist as it declines among many other states in the U.S. The state continues to have one of the nation’s highest rates of death sentences per capita. As of April 1, 2022, there are currently 80 Black people and 84 white people on death row. Though the Black and white populations are both about half of the total death row population in Alabama, Black people are represented at a disproportionately high number considering they make up only 27% of Alabama's general population.

Virginia

Capital punishment in Virginia Capital punishment was abolished in Virginia on March 24, 2021, when Governor Ralph Northam signed a bill into law. The law took effect on July 1, 2021. Virginia is the 23rd state to abolish the death penalty, and the first southern state in Unit ...

: The death penalty in Virginia came to an end on March 24, 2021 when the state became the first Southern state to abolish the death penalty. Prior to abolition, Virginia had some of the most executions out of any state since 1976, as well as the most executions overall in the pre-''Furman v. Georgia'' era.

= Exonerations

= Exonerations, in relation to the death penalty, are defined as the absolving of someone from their previous verdict of guilty and sentencing of death. Since January 1, 1973, 103 out of the 190 total exonerations in the U.S. have been African Americans. African Americans account for about 54% of all exonerations. This is further evidence that black Americans are more likely to be wrongfully convicted of a crime than white Americans.

= Discrimination in mass incarceration and capital punishment

= During the middle of the 20th century, a period of mass incarceration occurred in the United States. The United States became the country with the highest incarceration rate which caused the prison population to become heavily Black by the 1990s whereas it was mainly only white in previous years. White people accounted for 51% of the prison population while Black people accounted for 47% of the entire prison population during the 1990s. Even though Black people made up of around half the jail inhabitants, they only were 12.1% of the United States population and white citizens made up 80.3% of the total population during that time. The prison population had increased from 196,441 people in 1970 to 1.6 million by 2008. This discrepancy of races in the prison population related to the overall demographics of the United States has to do with the inconsistency of police arrests on citizens. Moving into 2015, Black people still made up only 12.1% of the total population but made up 18% of people who were stopped by police on the road. This led to the increase of disproportionate demographics in local jails and prison systems. By 2018, 592 Black people were in local jails per every 100,000 people and 2,271 Black men were incarcerated in federal prisons per 100,000 people. On the other hand, white people were incarcerated at a rate of 187 per 100,000 people in local jails and white men, at the federal level, were incarcerated at a rate of 392 per 100,000 people. This dramatic increase in Black arrests caused America's prison population to boom was which was all due to this long lasting period of mass incarceration. Mass incarceration had been increasing and there are many factors sustaining its rise. From over-policing to disproportionately long prison sentences, Black people have been targeted in mass incarceration and as a result, more susceptible to capital punishment.

= Cases

= With the United States' operation based on the U.S. Constitution, federalism allows the state government to share powers with the federal government. Under the various capacities, different court cases are heard in the national and state court systems. A defendant can be inflicted with the death penalty if they are found condemned of capital offenses, like first-degree

murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the ...

, murder with special circumstances,

treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...

, or

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the ...

. Because capital offenses are criminal cases, the state court systems are responsible to hear the majority of them. The

Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

and state courts' discretion in keeping the death penalty option are separate for the most part, if not appealed to the Supreme Court. According to the Legal Information Institute, “ it is not necessary that the actual punishment imposed was the death penalty, but rather a capital office is classified as such if the permissible punishment prescribed by the legislature for the offense is the death penalty.” After '' Roper v. Simmons'' in 2005, the federal court deemed if the defendant was under 18 years old at the time of the crime, they can not be sentenced to death because it violates the 8th Amendment.

George Stinney Jr.

Before the '' Roper v. Simmons'' ruling, 14-year-old black teenager George Stinney Jr. was the youngest person in the United States to be sentenced to death on June 16, 1944. Stinney was initially found responsible for the bludgeoning of two white girls to death. He died by

electrocution Electrocution is death or severe injury caused by electric shock from electric current passing through the body. The word is derived from "electro" and "execution", but it is also used for accidental death. The term "electrocution" was coin ...

. Although his case and death happened during the span of about 80 days in 1944, his convictions were annulled 70 years later in 2014. His exoneration was on the grounds that his 6th amendment rights were violated. After close examination it was found there was faulty interrogation that included coercion, absence of counsel, and absence of parental guidance. With Stinney’s treatment, the prosecutor relied heavily on an unsigned, off-the-record confession. Impartial evidence was absent for Stinney’s defense like witness testimonies from his family members that were with him during the time of the crime and community members. The culprit who is suspected of committing the crime against the two girls comes from a white affluent family, where the father happens to have served as the jury’s manager for Stinney’s case.

Exonerated Five The Central Park jogger case (events also referenced as the Central Park Five Case) was a criminal case over the aggravated assault and rape of a white woman in Central Park in Manhattan, New York, on April 19, 1989, occurring at the same time a ...

The systemic issue of biased investigation conduct is also seen in the Exonerated Five case. The Exonerated Five are made up of four black boys, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, and

Korey Wise Korey Wise (born Kharey Wise, July 26, 1972) is an American activist who travels the United States advocating for criminal justice reform. Wise shares his stories of being wrongfully convicted in the Central Park jogger case (along with Raymond San ...

. They are formerly known as the

Central Park Five Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object. Central may also refer to: Directions and generalised locations * Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...

and the Jogger Case. The boys received mixed convictions for assault, robbery, riot, rape, sexual abuse, and attempted murder of a white woman in 1990. The boys faced intense, un-recorded interrogations for at least seven hours in the absence of legal counsel with video confessions following, beside Salaam. Wise additionally had no parent present during questioning and confessing. The five boys later pleaded not guilty and recanted their statements because they were produced under intimidation. Despite no DNA evidence linking any of the boys to the crime scene, they were sentenced to 5 to 15 years. After 12 years, the sole perpetrator Matias Reyes, confessed to the crime while providing a DNA match to the only DNA selection found at the scene. Their false confessions were recognized for inconsistencies and their convictions were vacated in December 2002. They later sued the state and the city for reparations and received about $44 million in a settlement. Trump_Bring_Back_Death_Penalty_ad_1989

During the 1990 trial, former president

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...

(a real-estate character at the time) bought full-page ads voicing his reaction to the Central Park case. In the ad, Donald Trump says the following: “I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.” The boys were ranging from the ages of 14–16 years when the ad was released. In an archival interview with Larry King, Trump feels his belief is a common feeling because he received 15,000 letters of praise following the ad. In retrospect, Salaam reflects in an 2021 interview with ''PBS MetroFocus'', saying: “I look at what Donald Trump as being the nails that sealed us in the coffin. And then what happened after that, they published our names, our addresses, and phone numbers in the New York City newspapers. When you think about Donald Trump’s ad, it was a whisper into society to have someone come to our homes to drag us from our beds, and to do to us what they had done to Emmett Till.” Because the boys were minors, their identities were supposed to remain confidential. Salaam shares that his family received an insurgence of death threats following Trump's advertisement, culminating in a climate of aggressive hate. A Central Park Five representative comments that Trump's ad influenced public opinion, possibly further tainting the impartiality of potential jurors "who lready had a natural affinity for the victim." As of 2019, Donald Trump has refused to apologize and retract his statements despite the exoneration of the men.

Lena Baker Lena Baker (June 8, 1900 – March 5, 1945) was an African American maid in Cuthbert, Georgia, United States, who was wrongfully convicted of capital murder of a white man, Ernest Knight. She was executed by the state of Georgia in 1945. Baker ...

Lena Baker was a Black woman who was wrongfully convicted of the murder of her abuser in 1945. In Georgia, Baker served as a maid for a handicapped white man; she faced regular sexual and physical abuse from him. Despite the town terrorizing Baker to leave the relationship, her abuser would equally threaten her with violence if she ever left. Weeks before his death, he started holding Baker prisoner in his gristmill for numerous days. Baker was able to escape the mill, but when she came back, her abuser threatened her with an iron bar. After a struggle, Baker took ahold of his pistol and shot the man in

self-defense Self-defense (self-defence primarily in Commonwealth English) is a countermeasure that involves defending the health and well-being of oneself from harm. The use of the right of self-defense as a legal justification for the use of force ...

. The all-white, all-male jury did not empathize with Baker’s case of self-defense as a survivor of his slave-like conditions, including sexual and physical abuse. In less than a day, the jury found Baker guilty of capital murder, which happened to result in a mandatory death sentence in Georgia at the time. After failed appeals, reviews, and the abandonment of her legal representation, Lena Baker was executed by

in 1945. About 60 years following Baker’s death, her family, with the help of the Prison and Jail Project, requested a posthumous pardon. Their efforts succeeded in 2005 when Baker was granted a full and unconditional pardon from the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles because there was a lack of evidence to demonstrate Baker’s intent to kill. If the justice system had been careful with the evidence, they would have noted Baker’s conviction did not qualify as capital murder and should have resulted in a sentence other than the

death penalty Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...

Between sexes

As of May 20, 2021, the Death Penalty Information Center reports that there are 51 women on death row. 17 women have been executed since 1976, compared to 1,516 men during the same time period. Since 1608, 15,391 lawful executions are confirmed to have been carried out in jurisdictions of, or now of, the United States, of these, 575, or 3.6%, were women. Women account for death sentences, people on death row, and people whose executions are actually carried out. While always comparatively rare, women are significantly less likely to be executed in the modern era than in the past. Of the 16 women executed on the state level, most took place in either Texas (6), Oklahoma (3) or Florida (2) and were demographically, 25% (4) African-American, with the rest (12) being white of any ethnicity. Historically, the states that have executed the most women are California, Texas and Florida, though unlike Texas and Florida, California has not executed a woman in the post- Furman era. The racial breakdown of women sentenced to death is 61% white, 21% black, 13% Latina, 3% Asian, and 2% American Indian.

Methods

All 27 states with the death penalty for murder provide

as the primary method of execution. Vermont's remaining death penalty statute for treason provides

as the method of execution. Some states allow other methods than lethal injection, but only as secondary methods to be used merely at the request of the prisoner, or if lethal injection is unavailable due to an inability to procure the necessary drugs or due to court challenges to lethal injection's constitutionality. Several states continue to use the historical three-drug protocol: firstly an anesthetic, secondly pancuronium bromide, a paralytic, and finally potassium chloride to stop the heart. Eight states have used a single-drug protocol, inflicting only an overdose of a single anesthetic to the prisoner. While some state statutes specify the drugs required, a majority do not, giving more flexibility to prison officers. Pressures from anti-death penalty activists and shareholders have made it difficult for correctional services to get the chemicals. Hospira, the only U.S. manufacturer of sodium thiopental, stopped making the drug in 2011. In 2016, it was reported that more than 20 U.S. and European drug manufacturers including

Pfizer Pfizer Inc. ( ) is an American multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation headquartered on 42nd Street in Manhattan, New York City. The company was established in 1849 in New York by two German entrepreneurs, Charles Pfize ...

(the owner of Hospira) had taken steps to prevent their drugs from being used for lethal injections. Since then, some states have used other anesthetics, such as pentobarbital,

etomidate Etomidate (USAN, INN, BAN; marketed as Amidate) is a short-acting intravenous anaesthetic agent used for the induction of general anaesthesia and sedation for short procedures such as reduction of dislocated joints, tracheal intubation, cardiove ...

, or fast-acting benzodiazepines or sedatives like midazolam. Many states have since bought lethal injection drugs from foreign furnishers, and most states have made it a criminal offense to reveal the identities of furnishers or execution team members. In November 2015, California adopted regulations allowing the state to use its own public compounding pharmacies to make the chemicals. In 2009, Ohio approved the use of an intramuscular injection of 500 mg of hydromorphone (a 333-fold lethal overdose for an opioid-naive person) and a supratherapeutic dose of midazolam as a backup means of carrying out executions when a suitable vein cannot be found for intravenous injection. Lethal injection was held to be a constitutional method of execution by the U.S. Supreme Court in three cases: '' Baze v. Rees'' (2008), ''

'' (2015), and ''

'' (2019).

Offender-selected methods

In the following states, death row inmates with an execution warrant may always choose to be executed by: *

Lethal injection Lethal injection is the practice of injecting one or more drugs into a person (typically a barbiturate, paralytic, and potassium solution) for the express purpose of causing rapid death. The main application for this procedure is capital puni ...

in all states as primary method, in South Carolina as secondary method or unless the drugs to use it are unavailable *

Electrocution Electrocution is death or severe injury caused by electric shock from electric current passing through the body. The word is derived from "electro" and "execution", but it is also used for accidental death. The term "electrocution" was coin ...

in Alabama, Florida, and South Carolina (primary method) * Gas chamber in California and Missouri *

Nitrogen hypoxia Inert gas asphyxiation is a form of asphyxiation which results from breathing a physiologically inert gas in the absence of oxygen, or a low amount of oxygen, rather than atmospheric air (which is composed largely of nitrogen and oxygen). Example ...

in Alabama In four states an alternate method (firing squad in Utah, lethal gas in Arizona, and electrocution in Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee) is offered only to inmates sentenced to death for crimes committed prior to a specified date (usually when the state switched from the earlier method to lethal injection). The alternate method will be use for all inmates if lethal injection would be declared unconstitutional. In five states, an alternate method is used only if lethal injection would be declared unconstitutional (electrocution in Arkansas; nitrogen hypoxia, electrocution, or firing squad in Mississippi and Oklahoma; firing squad in Utah; lethal gas in Wyoming). In Alabama, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, "any constitutional method" is possible if all the other methods are declared unconstitutional. In the state that abolished death penalty or where its statute was declared unconstitutional, people sentenced to death for a crime before the date of the abolition may retroactively be subjected to death penalty. Those states' methods are: *lethal injection in Colorado *lethal injection in Delaware unless the offense was committed before 1986, in which case the inmate could chose between lethal injection and hanging *lethal injection in New Hampshire, unless this method is "impratical", in which case hanging would be the method *lethal injection or electrocution in Virginia *lethal injection or hanging in Washington When an offender chooses to be executed by a means different from the state's default method, which is always lethal injection, he/she loses the right to challenge its constitutionality in court. See ''Stewart v. LaGrand'', 526 U.S. 115 (1999). The most recent executions by methods other than injection are as follows (all chosen by the inmate):

Backup methods

Depending on the state, the following alternative methods are statutorily provided in case lethal injection is either found unconstitutional by a court or unavailable for practical reasons: * Electrocution in Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee. * Lethal gas in Alabama, California, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wyoming. * Firing squad in Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah. * Hanging in New Hampshire (where repeal of the death penalty in 2019 is not retroactive). Several states including Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah, have added back-up methods recently (or have expanded their application fields) in reaction to the shortage of lethal injection drugs. Oklahoma and Mississippi are the only states allowing more than two methods of execution in their statutes, providing lethal injection,

nitrogen hypoxia Inert gas asphyxiation is a form of asphyxiation which results from breathing a physiologically inert gas in the absence of oxygen, or a low amount of oxygen, rather than atmospheric air (which is composed largely of nitrogen and oxygen). Example ...

, electrocution and firing squad to be used in that order if all earlier methods are unavailable. The nitrogen option was added by the Oklahoma Legislature in 2015 and has never been used in a judicial execution. After struggling for years to design a nitrogen execution protocol and to obtain a proper device for it, Oklahoma announced in February 2020 it abandoned the project after finding a new reliable source of lethal injection drugs. Some states such as Florida have a larger provision dealing with execution methods unavailability, requiring their state departments of corrections to use "any constitutional method" if both lethal injection and electrocution are found unconstitutional. This was designed to make unnecessary any further legislative intervention in that event, but the provision applies only to legal (not practical) infeasibility.

Federal executions

The method of execution of federal prisoners for offenses under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 is that of the state in which the conviction took place. If the state has no death penalty, the judge must choose a state with the death penalty for carrying out the execution. The federal government has a facility (at U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute) and regulations only for executions by lethal injection, but the United States Code allows U.S. Marshals to use state facilities and employees for federal executions.

Execution attendance

The last public execution in the U.S. was that of Rainey Bethea in Owensboro, Kentucky, on August 14, 1936. It was the last execution in the nation at which the general public was permitted to attend without any legally imposed restrictions. "Public execution" is a legal phrase, defined by the laws of various states, and carried out pursuant to a court order. Similar to " public record" or "public meeting", it means that anyone who wants to attend the execution may do so. Around 1890, a political movement developed in the United States to mandate private executions. Several states enacted laws which required executions to be conducted within a "wall" or "enclosure", or to "exclude public view". Most state laws currently use such explicit wording to prohibit public executions, while others do so only implicitly by enumerating the only authorized witnesses. All states allow news reporters to be execution witnesses for information of the general public, except Wyoming which allows only witnesses authorized by the condemned. Several states also allow victims' families and relatives selected by the prisoner to watch executions. An hour or two before the execution, the condemned is offered religious services and to choose their last meal (except in Texas which abolished it in 2011). The execution of Timothy McVeigh on June 11, 2001, was witnessed by over 200 people, most by closed-circuit television. Most were survivors, or relatives of victims of, the 1995

Oklahoma City Bombing The Oklahoma City bombing was a domestic terrorist truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, on April 19, 1995. Perpetrated by two anti-government extremists, Timothy McVeigh and T ...

, for which McVeigh had been sentenced to death.

Public opinion

Gallup, Inc. Gallup, Inc. is an American analytics and advisory company based in Washington, D.C. Founded by George Gallup in 1935, the company became known for its public opinion polls conducted worldwide. Starting in the 1980s, Gallup transitioned its b ...

has monitored support for the death penalty in the United States since 1937 by asking "Are you in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder?" Gallup surveys documented a sharp increase in support for capital punishment between 1966 and 1994. However, perhaps as the result of DNA exonerations of death row inmates reported in the national media in the late 1990s, support began to wane, falling from 80% in 1994 to 56% in 2019. Moreover, approval varies substantially depending on the characteristics of the target and the alternatives posed, with much lower support for putting juveniles and the mentally ill to death (26% and 19%, respectively, in 2002). Given the fact that attitudes toward capital punishment are often responsive to events, to characteristics of the target and to alternatives, many believe that the conventional wisdom—that death penalty attitudes are impervious to change—is flawed. Accordingly, any analysis of death penalty attitudes must account for the responsiveness of such attitudes, as well as their reputed resistance to change. Pew Research polls have demonstrated declining American support for the death penalty: 80% in 1974, 78% in 1996, 55% in 2014, and 49% in 2016. The 2014 poll showed significant differences by race: 63% of whites, 40% of Hispanics and 36% of blacks, respectively, supported the death penalty in that year. However, in 2018, Pew's polls showed public support for the death penalty had increased to 54% from 49%. Since 2016, opinions among Republicans and Democrats have changed little, but the share of independents favoring the death penalty has increased by eight percentage points (from 44% to 52%). A 2010 poll by Lake Research Partners found that 61% of voters would choose a penalty other than the death sentence for murder. When persons surveyed are given a choice between the death penalty and life without parole for persons convicted of capital crimes, support for execution has traditionally been significantly lower than in polling that asks only if a person does or does not support the death penalty. In Gallup's 2019 survey, support for the sentence of life without parole surpassed that for the death penalty by a margin of 60% to 36%. A 2014 study found that the belief that the death penalty helps victims' families to heal may be wrong; more often than finding closure, victims' families felt anger and wanted revenge, with potential side effects of depression, PTSD and a decreased satisfaction with life. Furthermore, the researchers found that a sense of compassion or remorse expressed from the perpetrator to the victim's family had a statistically significant positive effect on the family's ability to find closure. In November 2009, another Gallup poll found that 77% of Americans believed that the mastermind of the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...

, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, should receive the death penalty if convicted, 12 points higher than the rate of general support for the death penalty upon Gallup's most recent poll at the time. A similar result was found in 2001 when respondents were polled about the execution of Timothy McVeigh for the

Oklahoma City bombing The Oklahoma City bombing was a domestic terrorist truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, on April 19, 1995. Perpetrated by two anti-government extremists, Timothy McVeigh and T ...

that killed 168 people.

Debate

Capital punishment is a controversial issue, with many prominent organizations and individuals participating in the debate.

and other groups oppose capital punishment on moral grounds. Some law enforcement organizations, and some victims' rights groups support capital punishment. The United States is one of the four

developed countries A developed country (or industrialized country, high-income country, more economically developed country (MEDC), advanced country) is a sovereign state that has a high quality of life, developed economy and advanced technological infrastruct ...

that still practice capital punishment, along with

, and

. Religious groups are widely split on the issue of capital punishment. The

Fiqh Council of North America The Fiqh Council of North America (originally known as ISNA Fiqh Committee) is an association of Muslims who interpret Islamic law on the North American continent. The FCNA was founded in 1986 with the goal of developing legal methodologies for ad ...

, a group of highly influential Muslim scholars in the United States, has issued a

fatwa A fatwā ( ; ar, فتوى; plural ''fatāwā'' ) is a legal ruling on a point of Islamic law (''sharia'') given by a qualified '' Faqih'' (Islamic jurist) in response to a question posed by a private individual, judge or government. A jurist ...

calling for a moratorium on capital punishment in the United States until various preconditions in the legal system are met.

Reform Judaism Reform Judaism, also known as Liberal Judaism or Progressive Judaism, is a major Jewish denomination that emphasizes the evolving nature of Judaism, the superiority of its ethical aspects to its ceremonial ones, and belief in a continuous sear ...

has formally opposed the death penalty since 1959, when the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now the

Union for Reform Judaism The Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), known as the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) until 2003, founded in 1873 by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, is the congregational arm of Reform Judaism in North America. The other two arms establishe ...

) resolved "that in the light of modern scientific knowledge and concepts of humanity, the resort to or continuation of capital punishment either by a state or by the national government is no longer morally justifiable." The resolution goes on to say that the death penalty "lies as a stain upon civilization and our religious conscience." In 1979, the

Central Conference of American Rabbis The Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), founded in 1889 by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, is the principal organization of Reform rabbis in the United States and Canada. The CCAR is the largest and oldest rabbinical organization in the worl ...

, the professional arm of the Reform rabbinate, resolved that, "both in concept and in practice, Jewish tradition found capital punishment repugnant" and there is no persuasive evidence "that capital punishment serves as a deterrent to crime." In October 2009, the American Law Institute voted to disavow the framework for capital punishment that it had created in 1962, as part of the Model Penal Code, "in light of the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment". A study commissioned by the institute had said that experience had proved that the goal of individualized decisions about who should be executed and the goal of systemic fairness for minorities and others could not be reconciled. , 159 prisoners have been exonerated due to evidence of their innocence. Advocates of the death penalty say that it deters crime, is a good tool for prosecutors in plea bargaining, improves the community by eliminating recidivism by executed criminals, provides "closure" to surviving victims or loved ones, and is a just penalty. Some advocates against the death penalty argue that "most of the rest of the world gave up on

human sacrifice Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more humans as part of a ritual, which is usually intended to please or appease gods, a human ruler, an authoritative/priestly figure or spirits of dead ancestors or as a retainer sacrifice, wherei ...

a long time ago." The murder rate is highest in the South (6.5 per 100,000 in 2016), where 80% of executions are carried out, and lowest in the Northeast (3.5 per 100,000), with less than 1% of executions. A report by the US National Research Council in 2012 stated that studies claiming a deterrent effect are "fundamentally flawed" and should not be used for policy decisions. According to a survey of the former and present presidents of the country's top academic criminological societies, 88% of these experts rejected the notion that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. Data shows that the application of the death penalty is strongly influenced by racial bias. Furthermore, some opponents argue that it is applied in an arbitrary manner by a criminal justice system that has been shown to be biased through the systemic influence of socio-economic, geographic, and gender factors. Another argument in the

capital punishment debate Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...

is the cost. Opponents to the death penalty note that the

, the most common method of carrying out the death penalty, can oftentimes cause executed individuals to remain conscious for several minutes after administering the injection, causing them to feel severe pain in their veins. The "three drug cocktail" consists of midazolam, a sedative, vecuronium bromide, a paralytic, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart. Opponents note that the midazolam in particular may mask the executed individual's pain and suffering. Opponents argue that this causes unnecessary pain and suffering on the executed individual and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Additionally, in 2021–22, states such as South Carolina have experienced a shortage of the drugs used to make the lethal cocktail and some inmates have had to choose between death by electric chair or death by firing squad (aiming for the heart). Critics note that these other methods are more likely to induce pain in the inmate during execution and that these methods of execution have a high risk of being botched.

Botched executions

One of the main arguments against the use of capital punishment in the United States is that there has been a long history of botched executions. University of Colorado Boulder Professor Michael L. Radelet described a "botched execution" as an execution that causes the prisoner to suffer for a long period of time before they die. This has led to the argument that capital punishment is

per se Per se may refer to: * ''per se'', a Latin phrase meaning "by itself" or "in itself". * Illegal ''per se'', the legal usage in criminal and antitrust law * Negligence ''per se'', legal use in tort law *Per Se (restaurant), a New York City restauran ...

cruel and unusual punishment. The following is a short list of examples of botched executions that have occurred in the United States. *

William Kemmler William Francis Kemmler (May 9, 1860 – August 6, 1890) was an American peddler, alcoholic, and murderer, who, in 1890, became the first person in the world to be executed by electric chair. He was convicted of murdering Matilda "Tillie" Zieg ...

was the first person executed in the electric chair, in 1890. After being pronounced dead after 17 seconds, he was found to be still alive. The current was applied a second time, for two minutes, to complete the death. * In Arizona, it took Joseph Wood two hours to die after being injected. * In Alabama, the execution of

Doyle Hamm Doyle Lee Hamm (February 14, 1957 – November 28, 2021) was an American death row inmate in Alabama, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1987 murder of Patrick Cunningham, whom he killed while committing a robbery. While on death row ...

was called off after prison medical staff spent nearly three hours attempting to insert an IV that could be used to administer the lethal injection drugs. In the process, the execution team punctured Hamm's bladder and femoral artery, causing significant bleeding. * In Florida, Jesse Joseph Tafero had flames burst from his hair during an electrocution. *

Wallace Wilkerson Wallace Wilkerson ( – May 16, 1879) was an American stockman who was sentenced to death by the Territory of Utah for the murder of William Baxter. Wilkerson professed his innocence, but chose to die by firing squad over hanging or decap ...

died after 27 minutes in pain after the

failed to shoot him in the heart. Because of this, the constitutionality of the use of the firing squad was questioned. The

affirmed that the firing squad did not violate the Eighth Amendment in the case ''

Wilkerson v. Utah ''Wilkerson v. Utah'', 99 U.S. 130 (1879), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court affirmed the judgment of the Supreme Court of the Territory of Utah in stating that execution by firing squad, as prescribed by the Utah territorial ...

'' (1879). * In New Mexico, Thomas Ketchum was decapitated when his body fell through the trap door during his hanging. * In Mississippi, Jimmy Lee Gray died after being in the gas chamber for nine minutes. During the procedure, Gray thrashed and banged his head against the metal pole behind his head while struggling to breathe.

Austin Sarat Austin Sarat (born November 2, 1947) is an American political scientist who is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He is also a Five College Fortieth Anniversary P ...

, a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, in his book ''Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America's Death Penalty'', found that from 1890 to 2010, 276 executions were botched out of a total of 8,776, or 3.15%, with lethal injections having the highest rate. Sarat writes that between 1980 and 2010 the rate of botched executions was higher than ever: 8.53 percent. Death penalty experts found that 36.8% of all executions attempted or completed in 2022 (all lethal injections) were botched.

Clemency and commutations

In states with the death penalty, the governor usually has the discretionary power to commute a death sentence or to stay its execution. In some states the governor is required to receive an advisory or binding recommendation from a separate board. In a few states like Georgia, the board decides alone on clemency. At the federal level, the power of clemency belongs to the President of the United States. The largest number of clemencies was granted in January 2003 in

when outgoing

George Ryan, who had already imposed a moratorium on executions, pardoned four death-row inmates and commuted the sentences of the remaining 167 to life in prison without the possibility of parole. When Governor Pat Quinn signed legislation abolishing the death penalty in Illinois in March 2011, he commuted the sentences of the fifteen inmates on death row to

life imprisonment Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted people are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives or indefinitely until pardoned, paroled, or otherwise commuted to a fixed term. Crimes fo ...

. Previous post-''Furman'' mass clemencies took place in 1986 in

, when Governor

Toney Anaya Toney Anaya (born April 29, 1941) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 26th governor of New Mexico from 1983 to 1987. Early life and career Anaya was born on in Moriarty, New Mexico. He earned a Bacheor of Arts degree from ...

commuted all death sentences because of his personal opposition to the death penalty. In 1991, outgoing

Ohio Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...

Governor Dick Celeste commuted the sentences of eight prisoners, among them all four women on the state's death row. And during his two terms (1979–1987) as

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and ...

's governor,

Bob Graham Daniel Robert "Bob" Graham (born November 9, 1936) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 38th governor of Florida from 1979 to 1987 and a United States senator from Florida from 1987 to 2005. He is a member of the De ...

, although a strong death penalty supporter who had overseen the first post-''Furman'' involuntary execution as well as 15 others, agreed to commute the sentences of six people on the grounds of doubts about guilt or disproportionality. On December 14, 2022, outgoing Oregon governor Kate Brown commuted the death sentences of all 17 inmates on Oregon's death row to life imprisonment without parole, citing the death penalty's status as "an irreversible punishment that does not allow for correction ..and never has been administered fairly and equitably" and calling it "wasteful of taxpayer dollars" while questioning its ability to function as a deterrence to crime. Governor Brown also ordered the dismantling of Oregon's lethal injection chamber and death row. Prior, Oregon had an ongoing official moratorium set by prior governor

John Kitzhaber John Albert Kitzhaber (born March 5, 1947) is an American former politician who served as the 35th governor of Oregon from 1995 to 2003, and as the 37th governor of Oregon from 2011 until his resignation in 2015. A member of the Democratic Party ...

in 2011 and had not carried out any executions since that of

Douglas Franklin Wright Douglas Franklin Wright (March 25, 1940 – September 6, 1996) was an American serial killer who murdered at least seven people between 1969 and 1991. He was sentenced to death for three of these murders and was executed in 1996 at the Oregon S ...

in 1997; furthermore, in 2019, the Oregon State Senate amended the state's death penalty statutes to significantly reduce the number of crimes that warranted the death penalty, thereby invalidating many of the state's active death sentences. In 2021, David Ray Bartol's death sentence was overturned on the grounds of it being a "disproportionate punishment" in violation of Oregon's state constitution, which death penalty experts and abolitionist advocates said would provide the rationale for the eventual overturning of every other death sentence in Oregon. Brown is the third Oregon governor to commute every standing death sentence in the state, after Governor Robert D. Holmes, who commuted every death sentence passed during his tenure from 1957 to 1959, and Governor

Mark Hatfield Mark Odom Hatfield (July 12, 1922 – August 7, 2011) was an American politician and educator from the state of Oregon. A Republican, he served for 30 years as a United States senator from Oregon, and also as chairman of the Senate Approp ...

, who commuted every death sentence in the state after Oregon temporarily abolished the death penalty in accordance with a statewide vote in 1964.

Moratoria on executions

All executions were suspended through the country between September 2007 and April 2008. At that time, the

was examining the constitutionality of lethal injection in '' Baze v. Rees''. This was the longest period with no executions in the United States since 1982. The Supreme Court ultimately upheld this method in a 7–2 ruling. In addition to the states that have no valid death penalty statute, the following 17 states and 3 jurisdictions either have an official moratorium on executions or have had no executions for more than ten years as of : Since 1976, four states have only executed condemned prisoners who voluntarily waived any further appeals: Pennsylvania has executed three inmates, Oregon two, Connecticut one, and New Mexico one. In the last state, Governor

commuted the sentences of all five condemned prisoners on death row in late 1986. In

, United States District Judge Jeremy Fogel suspended all executions in the state on December 15, 2006, ruling that the implementation used in California was unconstitutional but that it could be fixed. California Governor

Gavin Newsom Gavin Christopher Newsom (born October 10, 1967) is an American politician and businessman who has been the 40th governor of California since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 49th lieutenant governor of California f ...

declared an indefinite moratorium on March 13, 2019. On November 25, 2009, the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed a decision by the Franklin County Circuit Court suspending executions until the state adopts regulations for carrying out the penalty by lethal injection. In November 2011,

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

Governor

announced a moratorium on executions in Oregon, canceling a planned execution and ordering a review of the death penalty system in the state. On February 13, 2015, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf announced a moratorium on the death penalty. Wolf will issue a reprieve for every execution until a commission on capital punishment, which was established in 2011 by the

Pennsylvania State Senate The Pennsylvania State Senate is the upper house of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, the Pennsylvania state legislature. The State Senate meets in the State Capitol building in Harrisburg Harrisburg is the capital city of the Commonwealt ...

, produces a recommendation. The state had not executed anyone since Gary M. Heidnik in 1999. On July 25, 2019, U.S. Attorney General William Barr announced that the federal government would resume executions using pentobarbital, rather than the three-drug cocktail previously used. Five convicted death row inmates were scheduled to be executed in December 2019 and January 2020. On November 20, 2019, U.S. District Judge

Tanya S. Chutkan Tanya Sue Chutkan (born July 5, 1962) is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Biography Chutkan was born on July 5, 1962, in Kingston, Jamaica. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree ...

issued a preliminary injunction preventing the resumption of federal executions. Plaintiffs in the case argued that the use of pentobarbital may violate the

Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, commonly referred to as the 1994 Crime Bill, the Clinton Crime Bill, or the Biden Crime Law, is an Act of Congress dealing with crime and law enforcement; it became law in 1994. It is t ...

. The stay was lifted in June 2020 and four executions were rescheduled for July and August 2020. On July 14, 2020, Daniel Lewis Lee was executed. He became the first convict executed by the federal government since 2003. Overall, thirteen federal prisoners were executed during the presidency of Donald Trump between July 2020 and January 2021. The last convict executed was Dustin Higgs on January 16, 2021. On July 1, 2021, U.S. Attorney General

halted all federal executions pending review of the changes made under the Trump administration.

Explanatory notes

References

Citations

General sources

* Marian J. Borg and Michael L. Radelet (2004). "On botched executions". In: Peter Hodgkinson and William A. Schabas (eds.) ''Capital Punishment''. pp. 143–168. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . * Gail A. Van Norman (2010). "Physician participation in executions". In: Gail A. Van Norman et al. (eds.) ''Clinical Ethics in Anesthesiology''. pp. 285–291. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .

External links

Death Penalty Information Center
{{DEFAULTSORT:Capital punishment in the United States 1608 establishments in the Thirteen Colonies 1972 disestablishments in the United States 1976 establishments in the United States Crime in the United States Law of the United States

History

Pre-''Furman'' history

Early abolition movement

Constitutional law developments

Capital punishment suspended (1972)

Capital punishment reinstated (1976)

Supreme Court narrows capital offenses

Repeal movements and legal challenges

States that have abolished the death penalty

Modern era

Women's history and capital punishment

Juvenile capital punishment

Execution statistics

Capital crimes

Aggravated murder

Aggravating factors in federal court

Crimes against the state

Legal process

Decision to seek the death penalty

Sentencing

Direct review

State collateral review

Federal ''habeas corpus''

Section 1983

Execution warrant

Distribution of sentences

Among states

Among races

Statistics

Organizations against the death penalty for racial equity

= ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project

= Equal Justice USA

Black Americans and capital punishment

= Racial relationship between lynchings and capital punishment

= Racial breakdown of sentences by state

= Exonerations

= Discrimination in mass incarceration and capital punishment

= Cases

Between sexes

Methods

Offender-selected methods

Backup methods

Federal executions

Execution attendance

Public opinion

Debate

Botched executions

Clemency and commutations

Moratoria on executions

See also

Explanatory notes

References

Citations

General sources

Further reading

Books

Journal articles

External links