Wyoming

Timeline

1871 — John Boyer becomes the first man to be legal­ly exe­cut­ed in Wyoming and is pub­licly hanged in front of a Wyoming jail.

1977 — Wyoming rein­states the death penal­ty fol­low­ing Furman v. Georgia.

1992 — Wyoming car­ries out most recent exe­cu­tion, exe­cut­ing Mark Hopkinson by lethal injection.

2001 — Governor Jim Geringer signs a law to add the sen­tenc­ing option of life with­out parole as an alter­na­tive penal­ty for defen­dants con­vict­ed of first-degree murder.

2004 — The Wyoming Legislature pass­es a bill ban­ning the death penal­ty for juve­niles, mak­ing Wyoming one of the last states to do so before the Supreme Court banned the prac­tice in Roper v. Simmons.

2014 — Dale Wayne Eaton becomes the last per­son to be removed from Wyoming’s death row when his death sen­tence is overturned.

2019 — A bipar­ti­san coali­tion of leg­is­la­tors intro­duces a bill to abol­ish Wyoming’s death penalty.

2020 — Governor Mark Gordon informs leg­is­la­tors that he is ​“very seri­ous­ly” con­sid­er­ing impos­ing a mora­to­ri­um on the state’s death penalty.

2021 — A Wyoming sen­ate com­mit­tee advances a bill to repeal the state’s death penal­ty to the full Senate. The state sen­ate defeats the bill by a 4 – 1 vote.

Milestones in Abolition/​Reinstatement

Wyoming was one of the last states to ban the exe­cu­tion of juve­nile offend­ers before the Supreme Court banned the prac­tice in Roper v. Simmons. The state leg­is­la­ture passed a bill ban­ning the death penal­ty for juve­niles in 2004.

Other Interesting Facts

The last exe­cu­tion in Wyoming was that of Mark Hopkinson in 1992. The death sen­tence of the last per­son on Wyoming’s death row, Dale Wayne Eaton, was over­turned on November 20, 2014. Wyoming pros­e­cu­tors waived the death penal­ty in the case on September 27, 2021.

Resources

• Department of Corrections
• Public defend­er’s office
• ACLU of Wyoming
• Victims’ ser­vices

Wyoming Execution Totals Since 1976