In 2004, two researchers named M. Watt Espy and John Ortiz Smykia put together a list of executions that became known as "The ESPY File." The Espy File says that between 1608 and 1991, in the American colonies and then the United States, 15,269 people were executed. The Espy File is "the most often cited and used list of America's legal executions." However, in a 2011 study, two researchers criticized The Espy File. They wrote that researchers should not use the File as a complete source of information about executions.
According to the United States Department of Justice, between 1930 and 2002, the United States executed 4,679 people. About two-thirds of these people (about 3,100 people) were executed between 1930 and 1950.
Between 1916 and 1955, the United States military executed 135 soldiers. The military has not executed anyone since 1955.
In 2016, only 5 of 50 or 10% of US states had executions. They were Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Missouri and Texas.
Throughout American history, different methods of execution have been used. During colonial times, cruel and painful methods like burning or crushing people to death were sometimes used. However, since 1776, all but a few executions have been carried out in one of five ways: hanging, firing squad, the electric chair, the gas chamber, or lethal injection.
Since the Bill of Rights was added to the United States Constitution in 1791, "cruel and unusual punishment" has been against the law in the United States. This means that even if a person commits a terrible crime, the Constitution says their punishment cannot be painful or cause suffering on purpose.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, hanging was the most common method of execution in the United States.
However, hanging did not always work the way it was supposed to. If the rope and noose were not put in the correct position, a person could be decapitated. If the rope was not long enough, the person could slowly die of strangulation. People started looking for more 'civilized' ways to execute people.
After Thomas Edison discovered direct current (DC) electricity in 1882, his company showed how powerful it was by using it to kill animals. The idea of using electricity to kill humans grew out of this. New York built the first electric chair, and first used it to execute a prisoner on August 6, 1890. Other states also adopted the electric chair as a method of execution, believing that it was a less painful way to die than hanging.
However, it became clear, even to some members of the Supreme Court, that dying in an electric chair was very painful. Also, even up until the 1990s, electric chairs would work incorrectly, causing prisoners to catch fire or be awake while they were being electrocuted. Around the 1980s, most states began to use lethal injection instead.
Still looking for a more "humane" methods of execution, in 1924, Nevada prison officials tried to secretly pump cyanide gas into death row prisoner Gee Jon's cell to kill him while he slept. This did not work, and they had to build a gas chamber. On February 8, 1924, Jon became the first person to be executed by gas chamber.
From 1924 to 1972, the United States executed about 600 people in gas chambers. Most states used hydrogen cyanide gas. However, by the mid-1970s and 1980s, many people had started to criticize the use of gas chambers. Death from hydrogen cyanide poisoning can be long and painful, and in some executions, prisoners suffered long deaths. After one of these executions, a federal court in California ruled that "execution by lethal gas under the California protocol is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment."
Also, according to sociologist Clifton Bryant, the way it is used in the United States, "the gas chamber is ... the most dangerous, most complicated, and most expensive method of administering the death penalty." By the late 20th century, most states had switched to using lethal injection.
In the 1970s, Oklahoma passed the first law that allowed executions by lethal injection. This was a practical decision: Oklahoma's old electric chair would need expensive repairs, and building a gas chamber would cost over $200,000. However, executing a person by lethal injection would only cost $10 to $15 per person. Lethal injection grew more and more popular in death penalty states. It was viewed as less painful, with less suffering, than the electric chair or gas chamber. Texas was the first state to execute someone by lethal injection, in 1982. Over the next 30 years, all of the death penalty states passed laws making lethal injection their first-choice (or only) method of execution.
However, in the 2010s, American prisons started having trouble getting enough of the medications used to carry out lethal injections. The states had been using three medications for lethal injections:
Then, in 2011, Hospira, the only American company that made sodium thiopental, stopped making the drug. The European Union makes other anesthetics, like propofol. However, since the European Union is against the death penalty, they made it illegal to export any product that could be used in an execution. Another anesthetic, pentobarbital, is also only made in the European Union, and the company that makes it has put limits on selling it to U.S. government customers. A few states have tried mixtures of other drugs, but those executions have not gone well.
As of 2016, many death penalty states have temporarily stopped using lethal injection until they can find a solution to this problem.
As of January 1, 2016, fifteen states have laws that allow them to use a method of execution other than lethal injection. Before the lethal injection drug shortages, these other methods were rarely used. From 1976 to March 23, 2016, there were 1,431 executions:
However, since they stopped being able to get lethal injection drugs, some states have thought about going back to other methods of execution. Here are the states whose laws allow them to use other methods, as of January 1, 2016:
This table shows the death penalty laws in 49 of the 50 states; Washington, D.C.; the federal government; and the United States military, as of January 1, 2016. Under the category "Status," there are four possibilities:
Click on the little triangle at the top of each header box to sort the information in this table by a certain category.
In some areas, prosecutors ask for the death penalty, and judges grant the death penalty, more often than in other areas. Also, once people are convicted and are on "death row," how quickly they are executed depends on the state they are in. On average, in 2004, death penalty states had executed about 10% of the people on their "death rows." However, California had executed only 1% of its prisoners who are sentenced to death. Texas executed 40% of theirs.
One of the controversies about the death penalty is whether it is given unequally to people of different races.
In a report in 1983, David Baldus and others wrote a famous report that looked at whether the death penalty was applied equally to people of different races in Georgia. They found that:
In 1987, the Supreme Court decided a case called "McCleskey v. Kemp". McCleskey's lawyers showed that in Georgia, where McCleskey lived, black people convicted of killing whites were four times more likely to get the death penalty than people convicted of killing non-whites. The Supreme Court accepted this, but ruled against McCleskey. They wrote: "[inequalities] in sentencing are an inevitable part of our criminal justice system." Since then, judges have not allowed lawyers to argue that racial bias plays a part in the death penalty.
Anti-death penalty groups like Amnesty International say: