Title: Capital punishment in the United States
Content:  [[File:Death penalty in the United States with hiatuses.svg|thumb|250px|Without the death penalty: With the death penalty: ]] Capital punishment in the United States is a legal penalty in 27 states, American Samoa, the federal government, and the military, and is abolished in 23 states. Capital punishment is, in practice, only applied for aggravated murders committed by mentally competent adults (aged 18 and over). Although it is a legal penalty in 27 states, only 21 states have the ability to execute death sentences, with the other six, 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. Along with Japan, Taiwan, and 
Title: List of death row inmates in the United States
Content:  ; 22) Colorado (2020) ; 23) Virginia (2021) 1) Puerto Rico (1929) ; 2) Northern Mariana Islands (before 1970; prior to Commonwealth status) ; 3) Guam (1978) ; 4) Washington, D.C. (1981) ; 5) United States Virgin Islands (1991) Twenty-three states have abolished capital punishment. Crimes committed in these states are still eligible for the death penalty if they are convicted in federal court for violation of certain federal crimes. Capital punishment has been abolished in New Hampshire, but only for new sentences. One prisoner (Michael Addison) who was already sentenced to death remains on death row in the state. States and the date of abolition of capital punishment:  Territories: 
Title: Capital punishment by country
Content:  in exceptional circumstances (such as in time of war). ; 16 (46%) have abolished capital punishment. Of the 35 independent states in the Americas that are UN members:  Many Caribbean countries have carried out no executions for over 10 years, but are not believed to have an abolitionist policy or established practice. Currently (2021), the United States is the only country in the Americas to conduct executions for civil purposes. However while capital punishment applies nationwide on the federal level, only some states can be considered retentionist for ordinary crimes, as federal death penalty only applies for crimes committed in exceptional circumstances. Of the 50 states and one federal district, 23 are abolitionist 
Title: Capital punishment in the United States
Content:  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, 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 his nominee 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 
Title: Capital punishment
Content:  (2005; death penalty unconstitutional if defendant was under age 18 at the time the crime was committed). In the United States, 21 states and the District of Columbia ban capital punishment. Many countries have abolished capital punishment either in law or in practice. Since World War II there has been a trend toward abolishing capital punishment. Capital punishment has been completely abolished by 102 countries, a further six have done so for all offences except under special circumstances and 32 more have abolished it in practice because they have not used it for at least 10 years and are believed to have a policy or established practice against carrying out executions.
Title: Human rights in the United States
Content:  Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the United States, currently used by 28 states, the federal government, and the military. , there have been 1,517 executions in the United States since 1976 (when the death penalty was reinstated after it had been effectively invalidated as a punishment by a 1972 Supreme Court ruling). The United States is one of 55 countries worldwide that uses the death penalty, and was the first to develop lethal injection as a method of execution. Among the 56 countries categorized as 'Very high' on the Human Development Index, it is one of only 12 that retain 
Title: Capital punishment
Content:  By continent, all European states but one have abolished capital punishment; many Oceanian states have abolished it; most states in the Americas have abolished its use, while a few actively retain it; less than half of countries in Africa retain it; and the majority of countries in Asia retain it. Abolition was often adopted due to political change, as when countries shifted from authoritarianism to democracy, or when it became an entry condition for the EU. The United States is a notable exception: some states have had bans on capital punishment for decades, the earliest being Michigan where it was abolished in 1846, while other states still actively use it today. The death penalty in the United States remains a contentious issue which is hotly debated. In retentionist countries, the debate is sometimes revived when a miscarriage of justice has occurred though this tends to cause legislative 
Title: Capital punishment in the United States
Content:  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. 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. A total of at least 185 people who were sentenced to death since 1972 have since been exonerated. As of December 16, 2020, 2,591 convicts are still on death row. The Trump administration's Department of Justice announced its plans to resume executions for federal crimes in 2019. On 
Title: Capital punishment in the United States
Content:  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.
Title: Capital punishment by country
Content:  Of the 66 sovereign states categorized as 'very high' on the 2020 issue of the Human Development Index (referring to 2019), 12 perform capital punishment: Singapore, United States, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Belarus, Kuwait, Qatar, Malaysia, and Taiwan. In South Korea, Russia, the Bahamas, Barbados, and in Brunei, a moratorium is in practice. In Israel and Chile, it is restricted to crimes committed in wartime. All other countries in this category have abolished capital punishment.

Question: how many us states currently use capital punishment?
Answer: 31 states.
31.