In 2024, Alabama performed the first execution. Over the past 50 years, there have been around 1,600 States’ executions in the United States carried out in the United States.
The first States’ executions in the United States in 2024 and the first using a new form of the death sentence in decades occurred on January 25, when an Alabama prisoner was put to death.
After being found guilty of a 1988 murder-for-hire, Kenneth Eugene Smith was put to death by nitrogen hypoxia, in which his air supply was replaced with pure nitrogen gas. It was the first time a new technique had been utilized to execute a prisoner since the introduction of fatal injections in 1982.
Which states have the death penalty?( States’ Executions In The United States)
According to the Death Sentence Information Center, a nonprofit organization that offers information and analysis on matters pertaining to the death sentence and the people it impacts, Alabama is one of 27 states that have the death penalty. The majority of states with the death penalty are in the West and South, yet some, like Oregon, California, and Ohio, have stopped carrying out executions.
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States’ Executions In The United States
How many States’ Executions In The United States have occurred in the U.S.?
According to tracking by the institute, there were 24 state executions in total in 2023, with the most recent one occurring in November. Last year, fatal injections were used for all executions.
There have been 1,582 executions nationwide since 1977, when an effective ban on the technique stemming from a 1972 Supreme Court decision came to an end. The first execution by firing squad occurred in Utah. Included in that number are 16 federally ordered killings, among them the execution of Timothy McVeigh, the bomber from Oklahoma City in 1995. Of those sixteen federal executions, thirteen took place in the last few months of President Trump’s presidency. President Joe Biden nominated U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who put an end to federal executions in 2021 while rules and procedures were reviewed.
States’ Executions In The United States
Additional research indicates that hundreds more executions occurred in the United States prior to the contemporary era of the capital penalty, which started in 1977 and dates back to the early 1600s, when the colonies were still in existence. According to nonpartisan data center research by USAFacts, the most execution-prone year in the modern era was 1999, with 98 executions. There were over 100 executions in the years prior to the moratorium. For instance, there were 199 executions in 1935.
States’ Executions In The United States
Which states have carried out the most executions?
As of the end of 2023, Texas had carried out 586 executions since 1977, by far the most of any state in recent memory. The next biggest totals since 1977 are from Oklahoma (123), Virginia (113), Florida (105), and Missouri (97). Virginia became the first state in the South to outlaw the death sentence in 2021 when then-Democratic Governor Ralph Northam signed legislation to that effect.
States’ Executions In The United States
What are the most common execution methods in the U.S.?
Lethal injection has been the most common method used in the modern era by a wide margin, accounting for 1,402 executions. There have also been 163 executions by electrocution since 1977: 11 by gas, three by firing squad and three by hanging.
States’ Executions In The United States
What’s the racial or ethnic breakdown of prisoners who have been executed?
White defendants have accounted for the most executions (883 since 1977), followed by 537 black defendants and 132 Latinx, based on the DPIC’s figures. At the same time, according to data as of January 1, 2023, released by the center, the ratio of black defendants on death row (41%) is almost equal to that of white defendants (42%). Notably, black people make up about 14% of the U.S. population and non-Hispanic whites make up approximately 59%. Another source cited by the Death Penalty Information Center is a 1990 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office. A victim’s race “was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e., those who murdered whites were found to be more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks,” according to the research, which analyzed 28 studies.
States’ Executions In The United States
How does the U.S. compare to the rest of the world in terms of executions?
Amnesty International documented 883 executions in 2022, without counting China, where it is estimated that thousands of executions occurred in that year, though exact numbers are not known. The countries with the highest number of executions in 2022 were Iran (at least 576), Saudi Arabia (196), Egypt (24) and the United States (18).
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