District of Columbia

Notable Cases

The first record­ed exe­cu­tion in Washington, D.C. was the hang­ing of James McGirk in 1802.

Mary Surratt, the only woman exe­cut­ed in D.C., was hanged by the U.S. mil­i­tary in 1865 for con­spir­ing to assas­si­nate President Abraham Lincoln.

Charles Guiteau was exe­cut­ed in 1882 for assas­si­nat­ing President Garfield.

The District of Columbia has not had an exe­cu­tion since Robert Carter in 1957. Carter was con­vict­ed of fatal­ly shoot­ing an off-duty police offi­cer who pur­sued him after Carter robbed a dry clean­ers. The jury in the case rec­om­mend­ed mer­cy for Carter, but the law at the time man­dat­ed a death sen­tence for a con­vic­tion of first-degree murder.

Milestones in Abolition/​Reinstatement

The District’s death penal­ty was nul­li­fied by the Supreme Court deci­sion in Furman v. Georgia in 1972 and repealed by the D.C. Council in 1981. District res­i­dents vot­ed 2 – 1 against the death penal­ty in a 1992 ref­er­en­dum ordered by Congress. Prior to the ref­er­en­dum, the D.C. Council passed leg­is­la­tion allow­ing for a sen­tenc­ing option of life with­out parole for first-degree mur­der. Lawmakers tout­ed the leg­is­la­tion as an alter­na­tive to the rein­state­ment of the death penalty.

In 1997, the D.C. Council’s Judiciary Committee reject­ed a bill to per­mit cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for the mur­der of pub­lic safe­ty employ­ees. The bill was pro­posed by then-Mayor Marion Barry.

Other Interesting Facts

For most of its his­to­ry, Washington, D.C. was gov­erned by fed­er­al statutes. Although D.C. now has its own code of laws, it is still sub­ject to Congressional over­sight. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has sought the death penal­ty in mur­der cas­es that occurred in D.C.

Hanging and elec­tro­cu­tion are the only meth­ods of exe­cu­tion that have been used in the District of Columbia.

Resources

• Department of Corrections
  
• National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (locat­ed in Washington, D.C.)
• Amnesty International (locat­ed in Washington, D.C.)
• ACLU of the Nation’s Capital
• Prosecutors
• Public defend­er’s office
• Victims’ ser­vices