Probably the most com­plete col­lec­tion of infor­ma­tion on exe­cu­tions car­ried out in the United States from colo­nial times to the mod­ern era was assem­bled by Watt Espy of Headland, Alabama. Espy died on August 13, 2009 at age 76, but his files and cat­a­log of exe­cu­tions was pre­served and trans­formed over the years into a search­able data­base by friends and schol­ars who appre­ci­at­ed his work. Much of his archive is now locat­ed at the State University of New York at Albany. DPIC has infor­ma­tion from this data­base on our Espy File page. In addi­tion to a down­load­able Excel file of Espy’s cat­a­log of exe­cu­tions, DPIC offers three pdf files that can be viewed online, con­tain­ing infor­ma­tion on over 15,000 exe­cu­tions sort­ed by date of exe­cu­tion, state, and alpha­bet­i­cal­ly by defendant’s name.

(See Espy obit­u­ary, RickeyStokesNews​.com, Aug. 13, 2009). See Executions.

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