The Death Penalty in Puerto Rico

History of the Death Penalty in Puerto Rico

Capital pun­ish­ment was used dur­ing the Spanish regime. The first ver­i­fied exe­cu­tions took place in 1514, when four slaves were hanged for upris­ing. The first Inquisition court in the west­ern hemi­sphere was estab­lished in San Juan in 1519.

The num­ber of per­sons exe­cut­ed in Puerto Rico is:

(Source: Jalil Sued-Badillo, PhD., La Pena de Muerte en Puerto Rico: Retrospectiva históri­ca para una reflex­ión con­tem­poránea, Puerto Rico, 2000.)
 

The mod­ern death penal­ty was intro­duced to Puerto Rico in 1898 by the incom­ing American gov­ern­ment estab­lished when Spain turned Puerto Rico over to the United States fol­low­ing the Spanish American War. Puerto Rico abol­ished the death penal­ty in 1929, two years after their last exe­cu­tion. In 1952, when Puerto Rico draft­ed and rat­i­fied their own con­sti­tu­tion, the Bill of Rights includ­ed the straight­for­ward decree ​“the death penal­ty shall not exist.” Because of Puerto Rico’s sta­tus as a Commonwealth of the United States, it is sub­ject to some fed­er­al laws, and the U.S. has sought the death penal­ty on fed­er­al charges in a num­ber of cas­es. However, no death sen­tences have resulted.