Capital punishment in the United States

Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the United States, currently used by 31 states and the federal government. Its existence can be traced to the beginning of the American colonies.

There were no executions in the entire country between 1967 and 1977. In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down capital punishment statutes in Furman v. Georgia, reducing all death sentences pending at the time to life imprisonment.

Subsequently, a majority of states passed new death penalty statutes, and the court affirmed the legality of capital punishment in the 1976 case Gregg v. Georgia. Since then, more than 1,400 offenders have been executed, including 20 in 2016.

The United States is the only Western country currently applying the death penalty and was the first to develop lethal injection as a method of execution, which has since been adopted by five other countries.

The first recorded death sentence in the British North American colonies was carried out in 1608 on Captain George Kendall, who was executed by firing squad at the Jamestown colony for allegedly spying for the Spanish government.

The Espy file, compiled by M. Watt Espy and John Ortiz Smykla, lists 15,269 people executed in the United States and its predecessor colonies between 1608 and 1991. From 1930 to 2002, there were 4,661 executions in the U.S., about two-thirds of them in the first 20 years. Additionally, the United States Army executed 135 soldiers between 1916 and 1955 (the most recent).

The Bill of Rights in 1789 included the Eighth Amendment which prohibited cruel and unusual punishment. The Fifth Amendment was drafted with language implying a possible use of the death penalty, requiring a grand jury indictment for "capital crime" and a due process of law for deprivation of "life" by the government. The Fourteenth Amendment adopted in 1868 also requires a due process of law for deprivation of life by any state.

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