State & Federal Info
Federal Death Penalty
The federal government can seek death sentences for a limited set of crimes, but federal executions are much rarer than state executions.
For more information regarding the federal executions scheduled for July through September 2020, see our page Federal Execution Updates. See DPIC Statement on Federal Executions.
Overview
The federal death penalty applies in all 50 states and U.S. territories but is used relatively rarely. About 60 prisoners are on the federal death row, most of whom are imprisoned in Terre Haute, Indiana. Three federal executions have been carried out in the modern era, all by lethal injection, with the last occurring in 2003.
The federal death penalty was held unconstitutional following the Supreme Court’s opinion of Furman v. Georgia in 1972. Unlike the quick restoration of the death penalty in most states, the federal death penalty was not reinstated until 1988, and then only for a very narrow class of offenses. The Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 greatly expanded the number of eligible offenses to about 60.
The use of the federal death penalty in jurisdictions that have themselves opted not to have capital punishment—such as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and many states—has raised particular concerns about federal overreach into state matters.
Sep 03, 2020
DPIC Analysis: Federal Execution Spree Out of Step with U.S. Death Penalty Trends and Attitudes
At a time in which the United States as a whole and individual states and counties have continued their long-term movement away from the death penalty, the federal government’s current execution spree has established it as an outlier jurisdiction …
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Oct 22, 2020
World and European Day Against the Death Penalty: Expert Panel Discusses Systemic Flaws in U.S. Death Penalty
Expressing the hope “that we’ll be able to celebrate very soon, together with the American people, the abolition of the death penalty in the United States,” European Union Ambassador to the United States Stavros Lambrinidi…
Oct 19, 2020
U.S. Government Sets Two More Execution Dates, Seeking to Put to Death the First Woman and the Youngest Offender in More Than Six Decades
The federal government intends to continue its unprecedented execution spree into December, scheduling the executions of the first woman and the youngest offender put to death by federal authorities in nearly seven decades. In a Friday evening ann…
Oct 13, 2020
Federal Prosecutors Seek Supreme Court Review of Appeals Decision Overturning Death Sentence in Boston Marathon Bombing
Federal prosecutors have filed a petition in the U.S. Supreme Court asking the Court to review a federal app…
Oct 05, 2020
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of September 28, 2020
NEWS (10/1/20) — Washington, D.C.: The federal government has scheduled an eighth execution for 2020, setting a November 19 execution date for
Oct 01, 2020
New Podcast: Native American Rights Fund Lawyer Joel Williams on Tribal Sovereignty and the U.S. Death Penalty
In the September 30, 2020 episode of the Discussions With DPIC podcast, Native American Rights Fund senior staff attorney Joel Williams joins Death Penalty Information Center executive director Robert Du…
Sep 23, 2020
Federal Government Conducts Sixth and Seventh Executions Amid Continuing Litigation Over COVID-19 and the Legality of Its Execution Protocol
The federal government conducted its sixth and seventh executions in ten weeks on September 22 and 24, putting William Emmett LeCroy (pictured) and Christopher Vialva to death amid continuing challenges to the fed…
Sep 22, 2020
ACLU: Documents Show Federal Executions Likely Caused Prison COVID-19 Outbreak
Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act show that the federal government’s choice to bring hundreds of people to the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana to carry out…
Sep 18, 2020
Psychologist Raises Concerns About Upcoming Federal Execution for Crimes Committed as a Teenager
The federal government intends to execute Christopher Vialva (pictured) on September 24, 2020, the first time in nearly 70 years it will have put any teenage offender to death. But according to a prominent cognitive neuropsycholog…
Aug 27, 2020
Ignoring Tribal Sovereignty, Federal Government Executes Native American Death-Row Prisoner Lezmond Mitchell
Over the objections of Native American leaders across the country, the federal government on August 26, 2020 executed Lezmond Mitchell (pictured), the sole Native-American prisoner on federal death row. Mitchell, a Navajo citizen,…
Aug 26, 2020
Autopsy Results Provide ‘Virtual Medical Certainty’ that Prisoners will Experience ‘Excruciating Pain’ During Federal Executions
As the federal government began to carry out the second round of executions it has scheduled for 2020, autopsy results from the first round of executions in July suggest to a “virtual medical certainty” that federal death-row prisoners will experi…
