History of the Death Penalty

The fol­low­ing is a brief sum­ma­ry of the his­to­ry of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, with an empha­sis on devel­op­ments in the United States. The sources used in this sum­ma­ry are list­ed at the end to allow more in-depth research.

Early Death Penalty Laws

The first estab­lished death penal­ty laws date as far back as the Eighteenth Century BCE in the Code of King Hammaurabi of Babylon, which cod­i­fied the death penal­ty for 25 dif­fer­ent crimes. The death penal­ty was also part of the Fourteenth Century BCE’s Hittite Code, the Seventh Century BCE’s Draconian Code of Athens, which made death the only pun­ish­ment for all crimes, and the Fifth Century BCE’s Roman Law of the Twelve Tablets. Death sen­tences were car­ried out by such means as cru­ci­fix­ion, drown­ing, beat­ing to death, burn­ing alive, and impalement.

In the Tenth Century CE, hang­ing became the usu­al method of exe­cu­tion in Britain. In the fol­low­ing cen­tu­ry, William the Conqueror would not allow per­sons to be hanged or oth­er­wise exe­cut­ed for any crime, except in times of war. This trend would not last, for in the Sixteenth Century, under the reign of Henry VIII, as many as 72,000 peo­ple are esti­mat­ed to have been exe­cut­ed. Some com­mon meth­ods of exe­cu­tion at that time were boil­ing, burn­ing at the stake, hang­ing, behead­ing, and draw­ing and quar­ter­ing. Executions were car­ried out for such cap­i­tal offens­es as mar­ry­ing a Jew, not con­fess­ing to a crime, and treason.

The num­ber of cap­i­tal crimes in Britain con­tin­ued to rise through­out the next two cen­turies. By the 1700s, 222 crimes were pun­ish­able by death in Britain, includ­ing steal­ing, cut­ting down a tree, and rob­bing a rab­bit war­ren. Because of the sever­i­ty of the pun­ish­ment of death, many juries would not con­vict defen­dants if the offense was not seri­ous. This led to reforms of Britain’s death penal­ty. From 1823 to 1837, the death penal­ty was elim­i­nat­ed for over 100 of the 222 crimes pun­ish­able by death. (Randa, 1997)

The Death Penalty in America

Britain influ­enced America’s use of the death penal­ty more than any oth­er coun­try did. When European set­tlers came to the new world, they brought the prac­tice of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The first record­ed exe­cu­tion in the new colonies was that of Captain George Kendall in the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1608. Kendall was exe­cut­ed for being a spy for Spain. In 1612, Virginia Governor Sir Thomas Dale enact­ed the Divine, Moral and Martial Laws, which pro­vid­ed the death penal­ty for even minor offens­es such as steal­ing grapes, killing chick­ens, and trad­ing with Indians.

Laws regard­ing the death penal­ty var­ied from colony to colony. The Massachusetts Bay Colony held its first exe­cu­tion in 1630, even though the Capital Laws of New England did not go into effect until years lat­er. The New York Colony insti­tut­ed the Duke’s Laws of 1665. Under these laws, offens­es such as strik­ing one’s moth­er or father, or deny­ing the ​“true God,” were pun­ish­able by death. (Randa, 1997)

Colonial Times

Those who did not sup­port the death penal­ty found sup­port in the writ­ings of European the­o­rists Montesquieu, Voltaire and Bentham, and English Quakers John Bellers and John Howard. However, it was Cesare Beccaria’s 1767 essay, On Crimes and Punishment, that had an espe­cial­ly strong impact through­out the world. In the essay, Beccaria the­o­rized that there was no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the state’s tak­ing of a life. The essay gave abo­li­tion­ists an author­i­ta­tive voice and renewed ener­gy, one result of which was the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in Austria and Tuscany. (Schabas 1997)

American intel­lec­tu­als as well were influ­enced by Beccaria. The first attempt­ed reforms of the death penal­ty in the U.S. occurred when Thomas Jefferson intro­duced a bill to revise Virginia’s death penal­ty laws. The bill pro­posed that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment be used only for the crimes of mur­der and trea­son. It was defeat­ed by only one vote.

Dr. Benjamin Rush, a sign­er of the Declaration of Independence and founder of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, chal­lenged the belief that the death penal­ty served as a deter­rent. In fact, Rush was an ear­ly believ­er in the ​“bru­tal­iza­tion effect.” He held that hav­ing a death penal­ty actu­al­ly increased crim­i­nal con­duct. Rush gained the sup­port of Benjamin Franklin and Philadelphia Attorney General William Bradford. Bradford, who would lat­er become the U.S. Attorney General, believed that the death penal­ty should be retained, but that it was not a deter­rent to cer­tain crimes. He sub­se­quent­ly led Pennsylvania to become the first state to con­sid­er degrees of mur­der based on cul­pa­bil­i­ty. In 1794, Pennsylvania repealed the death penal­ty for all offens­es except first degree mur­der. (Bohm, 1999; Randa, 1997; and Schabas, 1997)

NINETEENTH CENTURY

In the ear­ly part of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, many states reduced the num­ber of their cap­i­tal crimes and built state pen­i­ten­tiaries. In 1834, Pennsylvania became the first state to move exe­cu­tions away from the pub­lic eye and car­ry them out in correctional facilities.

In 1846, Michigan became the first state to abol­ish the death penal­ty for all crimes except trea­son. Later, Rhode Island and Wisconsin abol­ished the death penal­ty for all crimes. By the end of the cen­tu­ry, the world would see the coun­tries of Venezuela, Portugal, Netherlands, Costa Rica, Brazil and Ecuador fol­low suit (Bohm, 1999 and Schabas, 1997).

Although some U.S. states began abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty, most states held onto cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Some states made more crimes cap­i­tal offens­es, espe­cial­ly for offens­es com­mit­ted by slaves. In 1838, in an effort to make the death penal­ty more palat­able to the pub­lic, some states passed laws against manda­to­ry death sen­tenc­ing, instead enact­ing dis­cre­tionary death penal­ty statutes. With the excep­tion of a small num­ber of rarely com­mit­ted crimes in a few juris­dic­tions, all manda­to­ry cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment laws had been abol­ished by 1963 (Bohm, 1999).

During the Civil War, oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty waned, as more atten­tion was giv­en to the anti-slav­ery move­ment. After the war, new devel­op­ments in the means of exe­cu­tions emerged. The elec­tric chair was intro­duced at the end of the cen­tu­ry. New York built the first elec­tric chair in 1888, and in 1890 exe­cut­ed William Kemmler. Soon, oth­er states adopt­ed this method of exe­cu­tion (Randa, 1997).

EARLY AND MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY

From 1907 to 1917, six states com­plete­ly out­lawed the death penal­ty and three lim­it­ed it to the rarely com­mit­ted crimes of trea­son and first degree mur­der of a law enforce­ment offi­cial. However, this reform was short-lived. There was a fren­zied atmos­phere in the U.S., as cit­i­zens began to pan­ic about the threat of rev­o­lu­tion in the wake of the Russian Revolution. In addi­tion, the U.S. had just entered World War I and there were intense class con­flicts as social­ists mount­ed the first seri­ous chal­lenge to cap­i­tal­ism. As a result, five of the six abo­li­tion­ist states rein­stat­ed their death penal­ty by 1920. (Bedau, 1997 and Bohm, 1999)

In 1924, the use of cyanide gas was intro­duced, as Nevada sought a more humane way of exe­cut­ing its inmates. Gee Jon was the first per­son exe­cut­ed by lethal gas. The state tried to pump cyanide gas into Jon’s cell while he slept, but this proved impos­si­ble, and the gas cham­ber was con­struct­ed. (Bohm, 1999)

From the 1920s to the 1940s, there was a resur­gence in the use of the death penal­ty. This was due, in part, to the writ­ings of crim­i­nol­o­gists, who argued that the death penal­ty was a nec­es­sary social mea­sure. In the United States, Americans were suf­fer­ing through Prohibition and the Great Depression. There were more exe­cu­tions in the 1930s than in any oth­er decade in American his­to­ry, with an aver­age of 167 per year. (Bohm, 1999 and Schabas, 1997)

In the 1950s, pub­lic sen­ti­ment began to turn away from cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Many allied nations either abol­ished or lim­it­ed the death penal­ty, and in the U.S., the num­ber of exe­cu­tions dropped dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Whereas there were 1,289 exe­cu­tions in the 1940s, there were 715 in the 1950s, and the num­ber fell even fur­ther, to only 191, from 1960 to 1976. In 1966, sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment reached an all-time low. A Gallup poll showed sup­port for the death penal­ty at only 42%. (Bohm, 1999 and BJS, 1997 )

The 1960s brought chal­lenges to the legal­i­ty of the death penal­ty. Before then, the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution were inter­pret­ed as per­mit­ting the death penal­ty. However, in the ear­ly 1960s, it was sug­gest­ed that the death penal­ty was a ​“cru­el and unusu­al” pun­ish­ment and there­fore uncon­sti­tu­tion­al under the Eighth Amendment. In 1958, the Supreme Court decid­ed in Trop v. Dulles (356 U.S. 86) that the inter­pre­ta­tion of the Eighth Amendment con­tained an ​“evolv­ing stan­dard of decen­cy that marked the progress of a matur­ing soci­ety.” Although Trop was not a death penal­ty case, abo­li­tion­ists applied the Court’s log­ic to exe­cu­tions and main­tained that the United States had, in fact, pro­gressed to a point that its ​“stan­dard of decen­cy” should no longer tol­er­ate the death penal­ty. (Bohm, 1999) In the late 1960s, the Supreme Court began ​“fine tun­ing” the way the death penal­ty was admin­is­tered. To this effect, the Court heard two cas­es in 1968 deal­ing with the dis­cre­tion giv­en to the pros­e­cu­tor and the jury in cap­i­tal cas­es. The first case was U.S. v. Jackson (390 U.S. 570), where the Supreme Court heard argu­ments regard­ing a pro­vi­sion of the fed­er­al kid­nap­ping statute requir­ing that the death penal­ty be imposed only upon rec­om­men­da­tion of a jury. The Court held that this prac­tice was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because it encour­aged defen­dants to waive their right to a jury tri­al to ensure they would not receive a death sentence.

The oth­er 1968 case was Witherspoon v. Illinois (391 U.S. 510). The Supreme Court held that a poten­tial juror’s mere reser­va­tions about the death penal­ty were insuf­fi­cient grounds to pre­vent that per­son from serv­ing on the jury in a death penal­ty case. Jurors could be dis­qual­i­fied only if pros­e­cu­tors could show that the juror’s atti­tude toward cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment would pre­vent him or her from mak­ing an impar­tial deci­sion about punishment. 

The issue of the arbi­trari­ness of the death penal­ty was brought before the Supreme Court in 1972 in Furman v. Georgia (408 U.S. 238). Furman, bring­ing an Eighth Amendment chal­lenge, argued that cap­i­tal cas­es result­ed in arbi­trary and capri­cious sen­tenc­ing. In 9 sep­a­rate opin­ions, and by a vote of 5 to 4, the Court held that Georgia’s death penal­ty statute, which gave the jury com­plete sen­tenc­ing dis­cre­tion with­out any guid­ance as to how to exer­cise that dis­cre­tion, could result in arbi­trary sen­tenc­ing. The Court held that the scheme of pun­ish­ment under the statute was there­fore ​“cru­el and unusu­al” and vio­lat­ed the Eighth Amendment. Thus, on June 29, 1972, the Supreme Court effec­tive­ly void­ed 40 death penal­ty statutes, there­by com­mut­ing the sen­tences of 629 death row inmates around the coun­try and sus­pend­ing the death penal­ty because exist­ing statutes were no longer valid.

Although sep­a­rate opin­ions by Justices Brennan and Marshall stat­ed that the death penal­ty itself was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, the over­all hold­ing in Furman was that the spe­cif­ic death penal­ty statutes were uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. With that hold­ing, the Court essen­tial­ly opened the door to states to rewrite their death penal­ty statutes to elim­i­nate the prob­lems cit­ed in Furman. Advocates of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment began propos­ing new statutes that they believed would end arbi­trari­ness in cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing. The states were led by Florida, which rewrote its death penal­ty statute only five months after Furman. Shortly there­after, 34 oth­er states pro­ceed­ed to enact new death penal­ty statutes. To address the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of unguid­ed jury dis­cre­tion, some states removed all of that dis­cre­tion by man­dat­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for those con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal crimes. However, this prac­tice was held uncon­sti­tu­tion­al by the Supreme Court in Woodson v. North Carolina (428 U.S. 280 (1976)).

Other states sought to lim­it that dis­cre­tion by pro­vid­ing sen­tenc­ing guide­lines for the judge and jury when decid­ing whether to impose death. The guide­lines allowed for the intro­duc­tion of aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors in deter­min­ing sen­tenc­ing. These guid­ed dis­cre­tion statutes were approved in 1976 by the Supreme Court in Gregg v. Georgia (428 U.S. 153), Jurek v. Texas (428 U.S. 262), and Proffitt v. Florida (428 U.S. 242), col­lec­tive­ly referred to as the Gregg deci­sion. This land­mark deci­sion held that the new death penal­ty statutes in Florida, Georgia, and Texas were con­sti­tu­tion­al, thus rein­stat­ing the death penal­ty in those states. The Court also held that the death penal­ty itself was con­sti­tu­tion­al under the Eighth Amendment.

In addi­tion to sen­tenc­ing guide­lines, three oth­er pro­ce­dur­al reforms were approved by the Court in Gregg. The first was bifur­cat­ed tri­als, in which there are sep­a­rate delib­er­a­tions for the guilt and penal­ty phas­es of the tri­al. Only after the jury has deter­mined that the defen­dant is guilty of cap­i­tal mur­der does it decide in a sec­ond tri­al whether the defen­dant should be sen­tenced to death or giv­en a less­er sen­tence of prison time. Another reform was the prac­tice of auto­mat­ic appel­late review of con­vic­tions and sen­tence. The final pro­ce­dur­al reform from Gregg was pro­por­tion­al­i­ty review, a prac­tice that helps the state to iden­ti­fy and elim­i­nate sen­tenc­ing dis­par­i­ties. Through this process, the state appel­late court can com­pare the sen­tence in the case being reviewed with oth­er cas­es with­in the state, to see if it is disproportionate.

Because these reforms were accept­ed by the Supreme Court, some states wish­ing to rein­state the death penal­ty includ­ed them in their new death penal­ty statutes. The Court, how­ev­er, did not require that each of the reforms be present in the new statutes. Therefore, some of the result­ing new statutes include vari­a­tions on the pro­ce­dur­al reforms found in Gregg.

The ten-year mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions that had begun with the Jackson and Witherspoon deci­sions end­ed on January 17, 1977, with the exe­cu­tion of Gary Gilmore by fir­ing squad in Utah. Gilmore did not chal­lenge his death sen­tence. That same year, Oklahoma became the first state to adopt lethal injec­tion as a means of exe­cu­tion, though it would be five more years until Charles Brooks became the first per­son exe­cut­ed by lethal injec­tion in Texas on December 7, 1982.

Limitations within the United States

After World War II, many European coun­tries aban­doned or restrict­ed the death penal­ty after sign­ing and rat­i­fy­ing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and sub­se­quent human rights treaties. The U.S. retained the death penal­ty, but estab­lished lim­i­ta­tions on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In 1977, the United States Supreme Court held in Coker v. Georgia (433 U.S. 584) that the death penal­ty is an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al pun­ish­ment for the rape of an adult woman when the vic­tim was not killed. Other lim­its to the death penal­ty fol­lowed in the next decade.

Mental Illness and Intellectual Disability

In 1986, the Supreme Court banned the exe­cu­tion of insane per­sons in Ford v. Wainwright (477 U.S. 399). However, in 1989, the Court held that exe­cut­ing per­sons with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, then referred to as ​“men­tal retar­da­tion,” was not a vio­la­tion of the Eighth Amendment in Penry v. Lynaugh (492 U.S. 584). Intellectual dis­abil­i­ty would instead be a mit­i­gat­ing fac­tor to be con­sid­ered dur­ing sen­tenc­ing. On June 20, 2002, the Supreme Court issued a land­mark rul­ing end­ing the exe­cu­tion of those with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, then referred to as ​“men­tal retar­da­tion”. In Atkins v. Virginia, the Court held that it is a vio­la­tion of the Eighth Amendment ban on cru­el unusu­al pun­ish­ment to exe­cute death row inmates with intellectual disabilities.

Race

Race became the focus of the crim­i­nal jus­tice debate when the Supreme Court held in Batson v. Kentucky (476 U.S. 79 (1986)) that a pros­e­cu­tor who exer­cis­es his or her peremp­to­ry chal­lenges to remove a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of cit­i­zens of the same race in select­ing a jury is required to show neu­tral rea­sons for the strikes. Race was again in the fore­front when the Supreme Court decid­ed a 1987 case, McCleskey v. Kemp (481 U.S. 279). McCleskey argued that there was racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in the appli­ca­tion of Georgia’s death penal­ty by pre­sent­ing a sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis show­ing a pat­tern of racial dis­par­i­ties in death sen­tences, based on the race of the vic­tim. The Supreme Court held, how­ev­er, that racial dis­par­i­ties would not be rec­og­nized as a con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tion of ​“equal pro­tec­tion of the law” unless inten­tion­al racial dis­crim­i­na­tion against the defen­dant could be shown.

Juveniles

In March 2005, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Roper v. Simmons that the death penal­ty for those who had com­mit­ted their crimes under 18 years of age was cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment and hence barred by the Constitution.

Innocence

The Supreme Court addressed the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of exe­cut­ing some­one who claimed actu­al inno­cence in Herrera v. Collins (506 U.S. 390 (1993)). Although the Court left open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Constitution bars the exe­cu­tion of some­one who con­clu­sive­ly demon­strates that he or she is actu­al­ly inno­cent, the Court not­ed that such cas­es would be very rare. The Court held that, in the absence of oth­er con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tions, new evi­dence of inno­cence is no rea­son for fed­er­al courts to order a new tri­al. The Court also held that an inno­cent pris­on­er could seek to pre­vent his exe­cu­tion through the clemen­cy process, which, his­tor­i­cal­ly, has been ​“the ​‘fail safe’ in our jus­tice sys­tem.” Herrera was not grant­ed clemen­cy, and he was exe­cut­ed in 1993. 200 peo­ple have been exon­er­at­ed from death row.

Public Support

Support for the death penal­ty has fluc­tu­at­ed through­out the cen­tu­ry. According to Gallup sur­veys, in 1936, 61% of Americans favored the death penal­ty for per­sons con­vict­ed of mur­der. Support reached an all-time low of 42% in 1966. Throughout the 70s and 80s, the per­cent­age of Americans in favor of the death penal­ty increased steadi­ly, cul­mi­nat­ing in an 80% approval rat­ing in 1994. Since 1994, sup­port for the death penal­ty has declined. As of October 2022, 55% of Americans sup­port the death penal­ty. However, research shows that pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty drops when poll respon­dents are giv­en the two choic­es a juror in the penal­ty phase of a typ­i­cal cap­i­tal tri­al would be giv­en: death or life impris­on­ment with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole (LWOP). Given that choice, Americans pre­fer life with­out parole over the death penal­ty. A 2019 Gallup poll found that 60% of Americans said LWOP was a ​“bet­ter penal­ty for mur­der,” com­pared to 39% who said the death penal­ty was the better punishment. 

Religion and the Death Penalty

In the 1970s, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), rep­re­sent­ing more than 10 mil­lion con­ser­v­a­tive Christians and 47 denom­i­na­tions, and the Moral Majority, were among the Christian groups sup­port­ing the death penal­ty. NAE’s suc­ces­sor, the Christian Coalition, also sup­ports the death penal­ty. Today, Fundamentalist and Pentecostal church­es, as well as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), sup­port the death penal­ty — typ­i­cal­ly on bib­li­cal grounds, specif­i­cal­ly cit­ing the Old Testament (Bedau, 1997). Although for­mer­ly also a sup­port­er of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the Roman Catholic Church now oppos­es the death penal­ty. In addi­tion, most Protestant denom­i­na­tions, includ­ing Baptists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and the United Church of Christ, oppose the death penalty.

Women and the Death Penalty

Women have, his­tor­i­cal­ly, not been giv­en the death penal­ty at the same rate as men. They com­mit far few­er mur­ders than men, and often the vic­tims are rel­a­tives or acquain­tances. From the first woman exe­cut­ed in the U.S., Jane Champion, who was hanged in James City, Virginia in 1632, to the present, women have con­sti­tut­ed only about 3% of U.S. exe­cu­tions. In the mod­ern era of the death penal­ty, that per­cent­age has shrunk to about 1% of exe­cu­tions. Only 18 women have been exe­cut­ed since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976. (O’Shea (1999) with updates by DPIC).

The Federal Death Penalty

In addi­tion to the death penal­ty laws in many states, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has also employed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for cer­tain fed­er­al offens­es, such as mur­der of a gov­ern­ment offi­cial, kid­nap­ping result­ing in death, run­ning of a large-scale drug enter­prise, and trea­son. When the Supreme Court struck down state death penal­ty statutes in Furman, the fed­er­al death penal­ty statutes suf­fered from the same con­sti­tu­tion­al infir­mi­ties that the state statutes did. As a result, death sen­tences under the old fed­er­al death penal­ty statutes have not been upheld. 

A new fed­er­al death penal­ty statute was enact­ed in 1988 for mur­der in the course of a drug-king­pin con­spir­a­cy. The statute was mod­eled on the post-Gregg statutes that the Supreme Court has approved.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that expand­ed the fed­er­al death penal­ty to some 60 crimes, some of which do not involve murder. 

In response to the Oklahoma City Bombing, President Clinton signed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). The Act, which affects both state and fed­er­al pris­on­ers, restricts review in fed­er­al courts by estab­lish­ing tighter fil­ing dead­lines, lim­it­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty for evi­den­tiary hear­ings, and ordi­nar­i­ly allow­ing only a sin­gle habeas cor­pus fil­ing in fed­er­al court. Proponents of the death penal­ty argue that this stream­lin­ing will speed up the death penal­ty process and sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce its cost, although oth­ers fear that quick­er, more lim­it­ed fed­er­al review may increase the risk of exe­cut­ing inno­cent defen­dants. (Bohm, 1999 and Schabas, 1997)

International Views

In April 1999, the United Nations Human Rights Commission passed a res­o­lu­tion sup­port­ing a world­wide mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. The res­o­lu­tion calls on coun­tries which have not abol­ished the death penal­ty to restrict its use, includ­ing not impos­ing it on juve­nile offend­ers and lim­it­ing the num­ber of offens­es for which it can be imposed. 

As of December 2020, 144 coun­tries are abo­li­tion­ist in law or prac­tice, leav­ing just 55 coun­tries active in the use of the death penal­ty. Of the thou­sands of known exe­cu­tions to take place in 2020, most were car­ried out by the China, Iran, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the USA. (Amnesty International, 2020)

Visit DPIC’s page on Abolitionist and Retentionist coun­tries for com­plete lists of coun­tries with and with­out the death penalty.