The Death Penalty Information Center is pleased to announce the intro­duc­tion of a new Web page on Native Americans and the death penal­ty. The page con­tains infor­ma­tion on the use of the death penal­ty against Native Americans and includes the results of an exten­sive his­tor­i­cal study con­duct­ed by David V. Baker. His research was recent­ly pub­lished in the December 2007 edi­tion of Criminal Justice Studies, and is the first of its kind. Baker report­ed 464 exe­cu­tions of Native Americans between 1639 and 2006, not count­ing thou­sands of extra-judi­cial exe­cu­tions. There is a break­down of exe­cu­tions by juris­dic­tion and by method.

As of 2006, 39 Native American pris­on­ers resided on state and fed­er­al death rows. Since the rein­state­ment of the death penal­ty in 1976, 15 American Indians have been exe­cut­ed, most­ly for the mur­der of white victims.

To view DPIC’s page on Native Americans and the death penal­ty, please vis­it here. DPIC will expand this page as more infor­ma­tion becomes available. 

(Posted March 14, 2008). See also Race and Executions.

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