Global InformationCapital punishment in the United States information
In the United States, capital punishment 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, 20 states currently 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 United States is one of four advanced democracies, along with Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan, and one of 54 countries worldwide where the death penalty is applied regularly.[3][4][5][6][7][8]
The existence of capital punishment in the United States can be traced to early colonial Virginia.[9] 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.[10] 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;[11] of these, more than 1,550 have been executed.[12][13] At least 190 people who were sentenced to death since 1972 have since been exonerated, about 2.2% or one in 46.[14][15] As of April 13, 2022, about 2,400 to 2,500 convicts are still on death row.[16]
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.[17] 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.[18] On July 1, 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that a moratorium on the federal death penalty was being reinstated.[19]
As of March 2024[update], there were 42 inmates on federal death row.[20]
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- ^ "Death Penalty States [2022]". Death Penalty Info. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
- ^ "States and capital punishment". National Conference of State Legislatures. Retrieved June 23, 2017.
- ^ Bienen, Leigh B. (2010). Murder and Its Consequences: Essays on Capital Punishment in America (2nd ed.). Northwestern University Press. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-8101-2697-8.
- ^ Reichert, Elisabeth (2011). Social Work and Human Rights: A Foundation for Policy and Practice. Columbia University Press. p. 89. ISBN 978-0-231-52070-6.
- ^ Durrant, Russil (2013). An Introduction to Criminal Psychology. Routledge. p. 268. ISBN 978-1-136-23434-7.
- ^ Bryant, Clifton D.; Peck, Dennis L. (2009). Encyclopedia of Death & Human Experience. Sage Publications. p. 144. ISBN 978-1-4129-5178-4.
- ^ Roberson, Cliff (2015). Constitutional Law and Criminal Justice, Second Edition. CRC Press. p. 188. ISBN 978-1-4987-2120-2.
- ^ "Lethal injection". capitalpunishmentuk.org. Retrieved March 16, 2016.
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- ^ Rigby, David; Seguin, Charles (March 2021). "Capital Punishment and the Legacies of Slavery and Lynching in the United States". The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 694 (1): 205–219. doi:10.1177/00027162211016277. ISSN 0002-7162. S2CID 235760878.
- ^ Latzer, Barry (October 27, 2010). Death Penalty Cases: Leading U.S. Supreme Court Cases on Capital Punishment. Elsevier. p. 37. ISBN 978-0-12-382025-9.
- ^ "Death Sentences in the United States From 1977 By State and By Year". Death Penalty Information Center. Retrieved April 24, 2017.
- ^ "Execution Statistics Summary – State and Year". people.smu.edu/rhalperi/. Retrieved January 26, 2017.
- ^ "Georgia inmate is the 1,500th person executed in the US since the death penalty was reinstated". CNN. June 21, 2019. Retrieved June 21, 2019.
- ^ "Innocence: List of Those Freed From Death Row". Death Penalty Information Center. Archived from the original on May 13, 2019. Retrieved May 13, 2019.
- ^ 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.
- ^ Fins, Deborah. "DEATH ROW U.S.A. Spring 2022: A quarterly report by Legal Defense Fund" (PDF). NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Retrieved January 2, 2023.
- ^ "US Executes First Federal Prisoner, Convicted Of Murder, In 17 Years". www.ndtv.com. Retrieved July 14, 2020.
- ^ Allen, Jonathan; Acharya, Bhargav (January 16, 2021). "U.S. carries out 13th and final execution under Trump administration". Reuters. Retrieved January 16, 2021.
- ^ "Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Imposes a Moratorium on Federal Executions; Orders Review of Policies and Procedures | OPA | Department of Justice". Justice.gov. July 1, 2021. Retrieved June 29, 2022.
- ^ "List of Federal Death-Row Prisoners". deathpenaltyinfo.org. Death Penalty Information Center. Retrieved May 11, 2021.