In addition to states that do not have valid death penalty laws, the following 13 states and 2 jurisdictions have an official moratorium as of 2022 or have not carried out executions for more than a decade: Only those convicted of crimes and crimes punishable by death have the right to be sentenced to death. Crimes that fall into this category include murder, espionage, war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and treason. Electric shocks occur in eight states and gas chambers are allowed in seven. Three states — Delaware, New Hampshire and Washington — still allow hanging. Four states – Mississippi, Oklahoma, Utah and South Carolina – allow death by firing squad. How many countries still apply the death penalty? From 2020, the death penalty will be legal in 25 states. A total of 22 states – plus Washington D.C. – have abolished the death penalty and three states have a moratorium imposed by the governor. The three states with a moratorium imposed by the governor are California, Oregon and Pennsylvania. Oklahoma and Mississippi are the only states that allow more than two methods of execution in their statutes: lethal injection, nitrogen hypoxia, electrocution, and firing squad in that order, when all previous methods are not available. The nitrogen option was added by the Oklahoma legislature in 2015 and has never been used in a judicial execution. [181] After struggling for years to design a nitrogen execution protocol and obtain a suitable device, Oklahoma announced in February 2020 that it had abandoned the project after finding a reliable new source of lethal injection drugs. [182] On October 11, 2018, Washington became Washington`s 20th state.
State that abolished the death penalty when the state Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional due to racial prejudice. [59] Following this decision, the use of the death penalty in the United States exploded. [38] This contrasts with trends observed in other parts of advanced industrial democracies where the use of the death penalty has declined or been banned. [38] Forty-seven European states, including Russia, are members of the Council of Europe,[39] and they all respect the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits the death penalty. The last execution in Britain took place in 1964[40] and in France in 1977. The first documented death sentence in the British North American colonies was carried out in 1608 against Captain George Kendall,[23] who was executed in the Jamestown colony for spying for the Spanish government by firing squad.[24] [25] Executions in colonial America were also carried out by hanging. The Bill of Rights, passed in 1789, included the Eighth Amendment, which prohibited cruel and unusual punishment. The Fifth Amendment was drafted with language that implies possible use of the death penalty and requires grand jury indictment for “capital crimes” and due process for government deprivation of life. [26] The Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868, also requires due process for the deprivation of life by all states. The death penalty is a legal penalty in the criminal justice system of the United States federal government.
It can be charged with treason, espionage, murder, large-scale drug trafficking or attempted murder of a witness, jury or court official in certain cases. Instead of abolishing the death penalty, 37 states enacted new death penalty laws that sought to address White and Stewart`s concerns in Furman. Some States responded by adopting mandatory death penalty laws that imposed the death penalty on anyone convicted of certain forms of murder. White had indicated that such a system would address his constitutional concerns in his Furman opinion. Other states have introduced “two-tier” trial and sentencing procedures, with various procedural restrictions on the jury`s ability to impose a death penalty in order to limit jury discretion. New Hampshire became the 21st state to abolish the death penalty on May 30, 2019, when its Senate overturned Governor Sununu`s veto by a vote of 16 to 8. [60] In some countries, the high number of aggravating factors has been criticized for giving prosecutors too much latitude in choosing cases in which they consider the death penalty to be justified. In California in particular, an official commission proposed in 2008 to reduce these factors to five (multiple murder, murder under torture, murder of a police officer, murder in prison, and murder related to another crime). [107] Columnist Charles Lane went further, suggesting that murder related to a crime other than rape should no longer be a capital crime if only one victim is killed. [108] Here are the 10 states that have recorded the highest number of executions since 1976: Colorado became the 22nd state to abolish the death penalty when Governor Jared Polis signed a repeal bill on March 23, 2020, commuting all existing death sentences in the state to life imprisonment without parole. [61] Treason, espionage, and large-scale drug trafficking are capital crimes under federal law.
Treason is also punishable by death in six states (Arkansas, California, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Missouri). In two states (Florida and Missouri), drug trafficking is punishable by death on a large scale,[115] in two other states (Georgia and Mississippi) by hijacking. Vermont has an invalid pre-Furman law that allows the electric chair for treason, although the death penalty was abolished in 1965. [116] In some countries, attitudes against the death penalty are changing. But executions are more frequent (and occur more quickly after conviction) in conservative states. Texas, the second most populous state in the Union, carried out more than 500 executions in the post-Furman era, more than a third of the national total. California carried out only 13 executions during the same period, and none since 2006. [153] [154] [155] This map shows which U.S. states still apply the death penalty and which have abolished or temporarily prohibited it.
The Supreme Court`s decision in Furman v. Georgia of 29 June 1972 established a de facto moratorium on the death penalty in the United States. Many states amended their laws to comply with Furman mandates and to reintroduce the death penalty after the 1972 verdict. To reduce litigation delays, other states require convicts to file their appeal on the state side before completing their direct appeal,[139] or jointly decide on direct and collateral attacks as part of a “unified review.” [140] Florida is one of 30 states that apply the death penalty. The first execution in Florida took place in 1827. Since 1976, after the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, Florida has executed 99 convicted murderers, including notorious serial killer Ted Bundy on January 24, 1989. In June 2013, Governor Rick Scott signed the Justice in a Timely Manner Act, 2013, which expedites the death penalty process by shortening appeal times for convicts and imposing reporting requirements on the progress of the case. As of November 2020, there were 339 offenders on death row. One of the main arguments against the use of the death penalty in the United States is that there is a long history of botched executions. Professor Michael L. Radelet of the University of Colorado at Boulder described a “botched execution” as one that causes the prisoner to suffer long before he dies.
[210] This has led to the argument that the death penalty is in itself a cruel and unusual punishment. Below is a short list of examples of botched executions that took place in the United States. Other notable female executions include Mary Surratt, Margie Velma Barfield, and Wanda Jean Allen. Mary Surratt was executed by hanging in 1865 after being convicted of conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. [96] Margie Velma Barfield was convicted of murder and when she was executed by lethal injection in 1984, she was the first woman to be executed since the death penalty was lifted in 1976. [97] Wanda Jean Allen was convicted of murder in 1989 and executed by lethal injection in January 2001. She was the first black woman to be executed in the United States since 1954. [98] Allen`s lawyers did not deny her guilt, but claimed that prosecutors exploited her low IQ, race, and homosexuality in their depictions of her as a murderer in court. The tactic did not work. [99] AEDPA also provides for expeditious habeas in capital cases for states that meet several conditions for the appointment of advisers for death row inmates. [145] Under this program, federal habeas corpus for convicted prisoners would be decided in about three years after the confirmation of the verdict on the state`s auxiliary review.
In 2006, Congress transferred the decision on whether a state meets the requirements to the U.S. Attorney General, with a possible appeal from the state to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. As of March 2016, the Department of Justice had still not issued certifications. [146] Three states abolished the death penalty for murder in the 19th century: Michigan (which has never executed a prisoner since its state creation) in 1847, Wisconsin in 1853, and Maine in 1887. Rhode Island is also a state with a long history of abolitionism that repealed the death penalty in 1852, although it was theoretically available for murders committed by a prisoner between 1872 and 1984. Three states (Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah) recently added backup methods (or expanded their use) in 2014 and 2015 to address the shortage of lethal injection drugs. [180] The United States is one of four developed countries, along with Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan, that still practice the death penalty.