Capital punishment in the United States

**Capital punishment** has existed in the **United States** before it became a country. As of 2021, capital punishment is legal in 27 out of 50 states. The federal government and the United States military have capital punishment.

The United States is the only Western country that has capital punishment.

## History
### Colonial America
#### Virginia
Before the United States became an independent country, it was a colony of the British Empire.  The first known death sentence in colonial America happened in 1608.  Captain George Kendall was executed by firing squad at the Jamestown colony after being accused of spying for the Spanish government.
* Picking flowers from a neighbor's garden
*  the British government (for the third time)
* Blasphemy (for the third time)
* Trading with Native Americans (for the first time)
* Leaving the colony (for the third time)
* Stealing food because of hunger (for the third time)

When some colonists decided they did not like these strict rules, they ran away from the colony to live with nearby Native Americans.  They were brought back to the colony, tortured, and executed.

#### The Thirteen Colonies
]]
Each of the Thirteen Colonies came up with its own death penalty laws.  For example, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was mostly Puritan, laws were harsh.  Under its first capital punishment laws, which were effective from 1636-1647, people were executed for sodomy, adultery, witchcraft, blasphemy, bestiality, assault, rape, statutory rape, perjury in a capital trial, and murder.  Later, the colony continued to execute people for witchcraft, including 20 people during the Salem Witch Trials.  They also executed people for being Quakers and pirates.

Under the New York colony's Duke's Laws of 1665, a person could be executed for " of the one true God" or for hitting their mother or father.

### Slaves
The first slaves were brought to the Jamestown colony in 1619.  Slavery was legal in the United States for the next 246 years, until the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution made it illegal in 1865.  Until that time, slaves had no rights.

Slaves could be punished or tortured for any reason, or for no reason at all.  Slaves who tried to escape or rebel were often tortured and executed where other slaves could see, to warn them not to do the same thing.

For example, in 1755, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a slave named Mark was accused of poisoning his "master."  He was executed, then hung in chains at Boston Harbor so his body would rot.

During the 1700s, in the Southern colonies, an unknown number of slaves were executed, sometimes for things like hitting another slave, "fussing," or "sassing" a white person.  Laws in the Southern colonies were passed allowing cruel and unusual punishments as well as capital punishment for slaves.

Major reforms started to happen between 1833 and 1853.  At that time, many executions were public events.  By 1849, fifteen states had switched to private hangings.

Between 1957 and 1973, six other states permanently abolished the death penalty:  They ruled that sentencing rules were discriminatory, because black people got sentenced to death more often than whites for the same crimes.  This meant that states could start executing people again, as long as they had rewritten their death penalty laws like Georgia did, to say that the death penalty would be applied fairly.  In 1977, executions began again in the United States.
 ages for executions before *Roper v. Simmons* ]]

#### Limitations
In two major cases, the Supreme Court has limited who may be executed.  In *Atkins v. Virginia* (2002), the Court decided that executing people with intellectual disabilities is cruel and unusual punishment, and is against the Eighth Amendment.

Also, in *Roper v. Simmons* (2005), the Supreme Court made it illegal to execute a person who was younger than 18 when they committed their crime.

### Number of executions
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.  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.

Between 1916 and 1955, the United States military executed 135 soldiers.  The military has not executed anyone since 1955.

File:1741 Slave Revolt burned at the stake NYC.jpg|A slave being burned at the stake after a planned slave revolt (1741)

File:Lincoln conspirators execution2.jpg|Hanging of people convicted of helping in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (1865)

File:Execution of Henry Wirz.jpg|The U.S. military hangs Henry Wirz for war crimes after the Civil War (1865)

File:George Stinney mugshot.jpg|George Stinney, age 14, executed in South Carolina in 1944

## Methods
 is hanged for witchcraft in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1656]]
Throughout American history, different methods of execution have been used.  During colonial times,  and painful methods like burning or  people to death were sometimes used.  This means that even if a person commits a terrible crime, the Constitution says their punishment cannot be painful or cause suffering on purpose.

### Hanging
Until the beginning of the 20th century, hanging was the most common method of execution in the United States.

### Electric chair
After Thomas Edison discovered direct current (DC) electricity in 1882, his company showed how powerful it was by using it to kill animals.  Also, even up until the 1990s, electric chairs would work incorrectly, causing prisoners to catch fire or be awake while they were being electrocuted.  Most states used hydrogen cyanide gas.  However, by the mid-1970s and 1980s, many people had started to criticize the use of gas chambers. and in some executions, prisoners suffered long deaths.  After one of these executions, a  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.  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.  Over the next 30 years, all of the death penalty states passed laws making lethal injection their first-choice (or only) method of execution.
# Sodium thiopental (an anesthetic to put the prisoner to sleep)
# Pancuronium bromide (to paralyze the prisoner)
# Potassium chloride (to stop the prisoner's heart)

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.  A few states have tried mixtures of other drugs, but those executions have not gone well.

As of 2016, many death penalty states have  stopped using lethal injection until they can find a solution to this problem.
* 1,256 (88%) were by lethal injection
* 158 (11%) were by electric chair
* 11 (0.8%) were by gas chamber 
* 3 (0.2%) were by hanging
* 3 (0.2%) were by firing squad

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:

File:gaschamber.jpg|The gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison in California

Image:Execution Chamber at Utah State Prison.jpg|Execution room at Utah State Prison, where prisoners can be executed by lethal injection or firing squad

File:Florida electric-chair.jpg|New electric chair, built in 1999, at Florida State Prison

## Laws
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:
# Abolished.  This state no longer uses the death penalty.
# Legal.  This state still uses the death penalty.
# Moratorium.  This means the death penalty law has been  stopped.
# *De facto* moratorium.  This means the death penalty is still officially legal.  However, the state has not executed anyone in at least five years (except for people who ask to be executed).

Click on the little triangle at the top of each header box to sort the information in this table by a certain category.

## Sentencing
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.

### Among races
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:
* People are more likely to be sentenced to death for killing whites than for killing blacks
* Black defendants are more likely to get the death penalty than whites

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  part of our criminal justice system."

Anti-death penalty groups like Amnesty International say:
* As of 2003, African Americans made up 41% of death row inmates, but only 12.6% of the United States population
** 34% of the people executed since 1976 have been African American
* About the same number of blacks and whites are murdered.  However, 80% of the people executed since 1977 were convicted of murdering white people

The United States Department of Justice says that between 1980 and 2008, African Americans committed 52.5% of the murders in the United States; whites committed 45.3%; and Native Americans and Asians committed 2.2%. This means African Americans are less likely to be executed on a per capita basis.  The Department of Justice also says that as of 2009, Hispanic or Latino people make up 17.4% of the United States population, but only 13.5% of death row prisoners.

A 2012 study found that non-white soldiers in the United States military are twice as likely as white soldiers to be given the death penalty.  Of the 16 soldiers the military has sentenced to death between 1985 and 2012, 10 (62.5%) were non-whites, one of the study's authors said.

### Among sexes
The death penalty is definitely given much more often to men than women.  As of October 1, 2014:
* 98.12% of the people currently on death row are men (2,978 men); 1.88% (57) are women
* 98.92% of the people executed since 1976 have been men (1,374 men); 1.08% (15) have been women

### Exoneration
The University of Michigan Law School keeps a list of people who have been exonerated from death row.  The list counts "exonerations" as cases where "a person who has been convicted of a crime is officially cleared based on new evidence of innocence."

According to the list, between 1989 and 2015, 116 people have been exonerated from death row.  The most common reasons why these people were exonerated were:
* The person was convicted at least partly because police, prosecutors, judges, or other government officials abused their power (88 people were exonerated at least partly for this reason.  This is about 76% of the 116 exonerated people.)
* Somebody lied in court or lied when they accused the person of the crime: (85 people  73%)
* The person was convicted based on forensic evidence that was wrong, , not proven to be good science, or was fake: 32 people (28%)
* The person's lawyer gave the person an "inadequate legal defense" (the lawyer did not give the person even a basic defense, or made very serious errors during the trial): 31 people (27%)

DNA evidence proved that 25 of these people  about 22%  were innocent of the crimes they were sentenced to death for.  In these trials, the defendants were sentenced to death anyway.  However, when their cases were appealed, over 80% of the defendants were not sentenced to death; 7% were found not guilty.  As proof, they point the 116 people who were exonerated from death row between 1989 and 2015.

Supporters also argue that the next most serious punishment for capital crimes is life in prison.  In some states, this means the person could be let out of prison someday.  Also, even being in prison for life does not keep killers from killing more people in prison.  Executing people is the only way to make sure they will never kill another person.  They point out that most states and countries that do not have the death penalty have lower murder rates than death penalty states.  Other studies have found that the death penalty is not a deterrent  in the United States, or in other countries.

### Whether the death penalty is applied unfairly
Opponents argue that defendants who are poor and/or non-white are more likely to get the death penalty than whites, even if they have committed the same crimes.  However, in his dissenting opinion in *Gregg v. Georgia*, Justice William Brennan wrote that the death penalty is "an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain... [it] is today a cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the ... Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments."

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), an anti-death penalty group, adds that capital punishment is "unusual" because:
* The United States is the only western nation that uses the death penalty; and
* Only a very small number of murderers in the United States get the death penalty.

### Morals and religions
or holds a sign quoting the Bible (Matthew 25:40)]]
Religion plays a complicated role in death penalty arguments.  To support the death penalty, some people quote from the Old Testament of the Bible, which says: "An eye for an eye, a life for a life."  This means that if you take a life, you should pay with your own life.  However, others use parts of the New Testament, where Jesus talks about forgiveness and nonviolence, to oppose the death penalty.  They say that no one has the right to take a life but God  even if that person has taken a life himself.

In 1999, a group of Jewish rabbis and Catholic Bishops had this to say:

Opponents also point out:

## Graphs and charts

|Map from 2014 showing states without the death penalty in green (Nebraska should also be green on this map)

File:Executions in the United States from 1608 (new).png|Number of executions in the American colonies and the United States, from 1608 to 2009

File:Methods of executions in the United States.PNG|Number of executions from 1608 to 2009, by method of execution

File:Death sentences United States (new).png|Total number of prisoners sentenced to death in the United States from 1953 to 2008

File:US executions.png|Executions in the United States from 1960 to 2010 (no executions happened between 1972-1976 because of *Furman*)

File:Map of US lethal injection usage.svg|States that use lethal injection  

File:Map of US electric chair usage.svg|Electric chair use  

|Death penalty laws in the world as of 2015   

File:2008 UN death penalty moratorium votes.svg|Map showing how countries voted when the UN suggested a death penalty moratorium (2008)

## Notes
## References
## Other websites
* Basic arguments for and against the death penalty (in Simple English)  from BBC