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Capital punishment in the United States

In the United States, capital punishment (killing a person as punishment for a crime) is a legal penalty throughout the country at the federal level, in 27 states, and in American Samoa.[b][1] 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.[2] It is usually applied for only the most serious crimes, such as aggravated murder. Although it is a legal penalty in 27 states, 19 states currently have the ability to execute death sentences, with the other 8, as well as the federal government and military, being subject to different types of moratoriums.

This article is about an overview of capital punishment amongst all jurisdictions in the United States. For capital punishment by the federal government, see Capital punishment by the United States federal government. For killings without trial within the United States, see Lists of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States. For killings without trial overseas, see targeted killings.

As of 2023, of the 38 OECD member countries, only two (the United States and Japan) allow capital punishment.[3] Taiwan is the only other advanced democracy with capital punishment, but its constitutional court could strike it down when it rules on its constitutionality by the fall of 2024.[4]


The existence of capital punishment in the United States can be traced to early colonial Virginia.[5] There were no executions in the United States between 1967 and 1977. In 1972, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down capital punishment statutes in Furman v. Georgia, reducing all pending death sentences to life imprisonment at the time.[6] Subsequently, a majority of states enacted new death penalty statutes, and the court affirmed the legality of the practice in the 1976 case Gregg v. Georgia. Since then, more than 8,700 defendants have been sentenced to death;[7] of these, more than 1,550 have been executed.[8][9] At least 190 people who were sentenced to death since 1972 have since been exonerated, about 2.2% or one in 46.[10][11] As of April 13, 2022, about 2,400 to 2,500 convicts are still on death row.[12]


The Trump administration'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.[13] Thirteen federal death row inmates have been executed since federal executions resumed in July 2020, all under Trump. The last and most recent federal execution was of Dustin Higgs, who was executed on January 16, 2021.[14] On July 1, 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that a moratorium on the federal death penalty was being reinstated.[15]


As of March 2024, there were 42 inmates on federal death row.[16]

Capital crimes[edit]

Aggravated murder[edit]

Aggravating factors for seeking capital punishment of murder vary greatly among death penalty states. California has twenty-two.[104] Some aggravating circumstances are nearly universal, such as robbery-murder, murder involving rape of the victim, and murder of an on-duty police officer.[105]


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.[106]


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).[107] 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.[108]

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 ).[127]

mistrial

In two states (Indiana and Missouri), the judge will decide the sentence.

In the remaining states, a hung jury results in a , even if only one juror opposed death. Federal law also provides that outcome.

life sentence

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

Lethal injection

in Alabama

Nitrogen hypoxia

in Alabama, Florida, and South Carolina (primary method)

Electrocution

in California and Missouri

Gas chamber

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.[274]

William Kemmler

In Arizona, it took two hours to die after being injected.[275]

Joseph Wood

In Alabama, the execution of 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.[276][277]

Doyle Hamm

In Florida, had flames burst from his hair during an electrocution.[278]

Jesse Joseph Tafero

died after 27 minutes in pain after the firing squad failed to shoot him in the heart.[279] Because of this, the constitutionality of the use of the firing squad was questioned. The Supreme Court of the United States affirmed that the firing squad did not violate the Eighth Amendment in the case Wilkerson v. Utah (1879).[280]

Wallace Wilkerson

In New Mexico, was decapitated when his body fell through the trap door during his hanging.[281]

Thomas Ketchum

In Mississippi, 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.[282]

Jimmy Lee Gray

Clemency and commutations[edit]

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.[284]


The largest number of clemencies was granted in January 2003 in Illinois when outgoing Governor 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.[285] 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.[47]


Previous post-Furman mass clemencies took place in 1986 in New Mexico, when Governor Toney Anaya commuted all death sentences because of his personal opposition to the death penalty. In 1991, outgoing Ohio 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's governor, Bob Graham, 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.[286] 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 in 2011 and had not carried out any executions since that of Harry Charles Moore 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, who commuted every death sentence in the state after Oregon temporarily abolished the death penalty in accordance with a statewide vote in 1964.[287][286]

First execution: Gary Mark Gilmore on January 17, 1977

Last execution: David Russell Hosier on June 11, 2024

A total of 1589 people have been executed in the United States since 1976.

Capital punishment by the United States federal government

Capital punishment debate in the United States

Felony murder and the death penalty in the United States

List of death row inmates in the United States

List of last executions in the United States by crime

List of people executed in the United States in 2024

List of people scheduled to be executed in the United States

List of United States Supreme Court decisions on capital punishment

Lists of people executed in the United States

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. :10.1017/CBO9780511489273.006.

doi

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. :10.1017/CBO9780511841361.051.

doi

Bakken, Gordon Morris (November 16, 2010). . UNM Press. ISBN 978-0-8263-4858-6.

Invitation to an Execution: A History of the Death Penalty in the United States

Banner, Stuart (2002). . Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-00751-2.

The Death Penalty: An American History

Bessler, John D. (2012). . UPNE. ISBN 978-1-55553-717-3.

Cruel & Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founders' Eighth Amendment

Blecker, Robert (November 19, 2013). . Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-27856-2.

The Death of Punishment: Searching for Justice Among the Worst of the Worst

Chammah, Maurice (2021). Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty. Crown.  978-1524760267.

ISBN

Delfino, Michelangelo; Day, Mary E. (2008). . MoBeta Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9725141-2-5.

Death Penalty USA 2005 - 2006

Delfino, Michelangelo; Day, Mary E. (2008). . MoBeta Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9725141-3-2.

Death Penalty USA 2003 - 2004

Dow, David; Dow, Mark (2002). . Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-93266-0. Provides critical perspectives on the death penalty.

Machinery of Death: The Reality of America's Death Penalty Regime

Garland, David (October 22, 2012). . Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-06610-6.

Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition

Hartnett, Stephen John (2010). . Michigan State University Press. ISBN 978-0-87013-869-0. JSTOR 10.14321/j.ctt7zt9dq.

Executing Democracy: Volume One: Capital Punishment & the Making of America, 1683-1807

Hartnett, Stephen John (2012). . Michigan State University Press. ISBN 978-1-61186-047-4. JSTOR 10.14321/j.ctt7zt4dg.

Executing Democracy: Volume Two: Capital Punishment and the Making of America, 1835-1843

Lane, Charles (2010). . Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4422-0378-5.

Stay of Execution: Saving the Death Penalty from Itself

Megivern, James J. (1997). . Paulist Press. ISBN 978-0-8091-0487-1.

The Death Penalty: An Historical and Theological Survey

Osler, Mark William (2009). . Abingdon Press. ISBN 978-0-687-64756-9.

Jesus on Death Row: The Trial of Jesus and American Capital Punishment

Pfeiffer, Michael J. (2004). Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874–1947. University of Illinois Press.  978-0252029172. The history of lynching and the history of the death penalty in the United States are hopelessly entangled (p. 152).

ISBN

Prejean, Helen (May 31, 1994). . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-679-75131-1. Describes the case of death row convict Elmo Patrick Sonnier, while also giving a general overview of issues connected to the death penalty.

Dead Man Walking: The Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty That Sparked a National Debate

Death Penalty Information Center