There are excellent sources available for those interested in the history of capital punishment. The following pages contain a brief summary of that history, with an emphasis on developments in the United States.

This chart* chronicles the United State’s use of the death penalty over the past four centuries. The chart highlights the gradual rise in use of capital punishment in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries; a peak of executions in the early 20th century; moratorium; and then the resumption of executions after moratorium.
The use of the death penalty has declined sharply in the United States over the past 25 years. New death sentences have fallen more than 85% since peaking at more than 300 death sentences per year in the mid 1990s. Executions have declined by 75% since peaking at 98 in 1999.

For a timeline of significant events in the history of the death penalty in the United States, see DPIC’s Death Penalty Timeline. For dynamic visualizations and more information on executions and new death sentences in the modern era of capital punishment, see DPIC’s Executions and Sentencing Data pages.
*The statistics used in the chart were primarily compiled from M. Watt Espy and John Ortiz Smylka’s database, “Executions in the U.S. 1608-2002: The Espy File.” (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research) Periodically, DPIC will feature additional information derived from the Espy file. See also The Espy File.
News & Developments
News
Oct 13, 2023
New Legal Research Declares “Heightened Standards” of Due Process in Capital Cases an “Illusion”

In a new law review article, Professor Anna VanCleave of the University of Connecticut School of Law argues that the “heightened standards” of due process protection for capital defendants, required under the Eighth Amendment, are in practice no more than “a veneer of legitimacy and procedural caution” that fail to vindicate defendants’ rights. Professor VanCleave found that in the absence of clear guidance from the Supreme Court as to the actual meaning of “heightened standards,” lower courts apply the same standards used in non-capital criminal cases or even relax rules…
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Dec 07, 2022
As Lethal Injection Turns Forty, States Botch a Record Number of Executions
On December 7, 1982, Texas strapped Charles Brooks to a gurney, inserted an intravenous line into his arm, and injected a lethal dose of sodium thiopental into his veins, launching the lethal-injection era of American executions. In the precisely forty years since, U.S. states and the federal government have put 1377 prisoners to death by some version of the method. Touted as swift and painless and a more humane way to die — just as execution proponents had said nearly a century before about the electric chair — the method…
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Nov 07, 2022
Closing the Slaughterhouse: The Inside Story of Death Penalty Abolition in Virginia
Virginia made history in 2021 when it became the first Southern state to abolish the death penalty. Closing the Slaughterhouse: The Inside Story of Death Penalty Abolition in Virginia tells the story of the commonwealth’s journey from leading executioner to groundbreaking abolitionist state. Written by journalist, author, and anti-death penalty advocate Dale Brumfield, the book explores Virginia’s history surrounding capital punishment, starting with the first execution in 1608 through its abolition on July 1, 2021.
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Aug 01, 2022
Massachusetts Formally Exonerates Last ‘Witch’ Wrongfully Condemned During Salem Hysteria. Will Connecticut Follow Suit?
As Massachusetts formally exonerated the last person condemned for witchcraft in the colony, efforts are under way to clear the names of the 46 people wrongfully charged with witchcraft in neighboring Connecticut during the 17th century Puritan witch hunts.
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Jun 21, 2022
Pennsylvania Teen Exonerated 91 Years After Sham Trial and Execution on Racially Motivated Charges that He Had Murdered a White Woman
An African-American teenager who was convicted and sentenced to death in Pennsylvania on false charges that he had murdered a white woman has been exonerated, 91 years after he was executed.
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Jan 14, 2022
Commentary: ‘Southern Pride,’ White Mob Mentality, and the Death Penalty
The same brand of Southern pride that inspired lynchings after the U.S. Civil War fuels support for the death penalty today, writes legal analyst Joia Erin Thornton (pictured) in a commentary on the web publication, Blavity. In The Dark Southern Pride Upholding The Barbaric Death Penalty, published December 23, 2021, Thornton argues that, just as Southern states in Reconstruction turned to extreme carceral punishments to reimpose violent control over Black Americans after the abolition of slavery, Southern states today lead the way in executions.
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Sep 01, 2021
Massachusetts 8th Graders Push to Exonerate Woman Sentenced to Death in 1693 in Salem Witchcraft Hysteria
A group of 8th graders from North Andover Middle School in North Andover, Massachusetts are championing efforts to posthumously pardon a young woman who was sentenced to death for witchcraft in 1693 during the height of the Salem witchcraft hysteria.
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May 06, 2021
South Carolina Legislature Authorizes Use of Electric Chair and Firing Squad as State Reaches 10 Years Without an Execution
One day shy of the tenth anniversary of the state’s last execution, the South Carolina legislature, frustrated by the state’s inability to obtain execution drugs, approved a bill that would authorize putting prisoners to death in the electric chair or by firing squad.
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Apr 30, 2021
Martin Luther King III: Virginia’s Death Penalty Repeal Shows ‘What is Possible When We Confront This Country’s Racist Past’
The history of racial oppression and lynching in the U.S. South has, civil rights advocate Martin Luther King III writes, “too frequently … gone untold and unaddressed.” But, he says in an April 17, 2021 op-ed in USA Today, Virginia’s repeal of the death penalty “shows us what is possible when we confront this country’s racist past, and acknowledge how racism permeates this country’s practices and laws.”
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Apr 09, 2021
Report: 83% of Death Sentences Have Not Resulted in Executions Under Ohio’s ‘Lethargic’ Death Penalty
Just one out of every six death sentences imposed in Ohio in the past forty years has resulted in an execution, according to the Ohio Attorney General’s 2020 Ohio Capital Crimes Annual Report. The report, released by Attorney General Dave Yost on April 1, 2021, criticized the state’s death-penalty system as “increasingly time-consuming, costly, and lethargic.”
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Mar 24, 2021
Virginia Becomes 23rd State and the First in the South to Abolish the Death Penalty
Saying “[t]here is no place today for the death penalty in this commonwealth, in the South, or in this nation,” Governor Ralph Northam (pictured) signed historic legislation making Virginia the 23rd U.S. state and the first in the South to abolish capital punishment.
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