In the United States, capital punishment is a legal penalty throughout the country at the federal level, in 27 states, and in American Samoa. It is also a legal penalty for some military offenses. Capital punishment has been abolished in 23 states and in the federal capital, Washington, D.C. Capital punishment is, in practice, only applied for aggravated murder. Although it is a legal penalty in 27 states, only 20 states have the ability to execute death sentences, with the other seven, as well as the federal government, being subject to different types of moratoriums. The existence of capital punishment in the United States can be traced to early colonial Virginia. Along with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, the United States is one of five advanced democracies and the only Western nation that applies the death penalty regularly. It is one of 54 countries worldwide applying it, and was the first to develop lethal injection as a method of execution, which has since been adopted by five other countries. The Philippines has since abolished executions, and Guatemala has done so for civil offenses, leaving the United States as one of four countries to still use this method. It is common practice for the condemned to be administered sedatives prior to execution, regardless of the method used.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Ohio, although all executions have been suspended indefinitely by Governor Mike DeWine until a replacement for lethal injection is chosen by the Ohio General Assembly. The last execution in the state was in July 2018, when Robert J. Van Hook was executed via lethal injection for murder.
Capital punishment was abolished via the legislative process on May 2, 2013, in the U.S. state of Maryland.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Nebraska. In 2015, the state legislature voted to repeal the death penalty, overriding governor Pete Ricketts' veto. However, a petition drive secured enough signatures to suspend the repeal until a public vote. In the November 2016 general election, voters rejected the repeal measure, preserving capital punishment in the state. Nebraska currently has 12 inmates on death row.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Oklahoma.
San Quentin State Prison (SQ) is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men, located north of San Francisco in the unincorporated place of San Quentin in Marin County.
Old Sparky is the nickname of the electric chairs in Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Old Smokey was the nickname of the electric chairs used in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. "Old Sparky" is sometimes used to refer to electric chairs in general, and not one of a specific state.
Frances Elaine Newton was executed by lethal injection in the state of Texas for the April 7, 1987 murder of her husband, Adrian, 23, her son, Alton, 7, and daughter, Farrah, 21 months.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Texas for murder, and participation in a felony resulting in death if committed by an individual who has attained or is over the age of 18.
Opened in 1969, Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison (GDCP) is a Georgia Department of Corrections prison for men in unincorporated Butts County, Georgia, near Jackson. The prison holds the state execution chamber. The execution equipment was moved to the prison in June 1980, with the first execution in the facility occurring on December 15, 1983. The prison houses the male death row, while female death row inmates reside in Arrendale State Prison.
Curtis Osborne was an American convicted murderer on death row in Georgia from Spalding County. He murdered Arthur Lee Jones and Linda Lisa Seaborne in 1990 to avoid paying a $400 debt. Johnny Mostiler, his court-appointed attorney, allegedly neglected to inform Osborne that the prosecutor had offered him a life sentence in exchange for a plea bargain, declaring "That little nigger deserves the death penalty." Osborne's case for clemency was championed by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former Deputy U.S. Attorney General Larry Thompson, who wrote letters to the clemency board pleading for mercy. Former U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell also spoke on his behalf. His execution was carried out despite these appeals.
Death row, also known as condemned row, is a place in a prison that houses inmates awaiting execution after being convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution, even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists. In the United States, after an individual is found guilty of a capital offense in states where execution is a legal penalty, the judge will give the jury the option of imposing a death sentence or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. It is then up to the jury to decide whether to give the death sentence; this usually has to be a unanimous decision. If the jury agrees on death, the defendant will remain on death row during appeal and habeas corpus procedures, which may continue for several decades.
Romell Broom was an American death row inmate who was convicted of murder, kidnapping and rape. He was sentenced to death for the 1984 murder of 14-year-old Tryna Middleton. Broom was scheduled to be executed on September 15, 2009, but after executioners failed to locate a vein he was granted a reprieve. A second execution attempt was scheduled for June 2020, which was delayed until March 2022. Broom died in prison before the sentence could be carried out.
Capital punishment was outlawed in New York after the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, declared the practice as currently practiced unconstitutional under the state's constitution in 2004. However certain crimes occurring in the state that fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government are subject to the federal death penalty.
Kimberly LaGayle McCarthy was an American death row inmate and suspected serial killer who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of her neighbor, 71-year-old retired college professor Dorothy Booth, in her Lancaster, Texas home during a robbery. She was a suspect in the murders of two other elderly Texas women, for which she was never tried.
Edmund George Zagorski was an American convicted murderer from Michigan who was executed by the state of Tennessee for the 1983 murders of John Dotson and Jimmy Porter in Robertson County. Zagorski lured the two men into a wooded hunting ground under the pretense of selling them 100 lb of marijuana before shooting them and slitting their throats.
Oscar Franklin Smith is an American man convicted of capital murder in Tennessee and sentenced to death. Smith has maintained innocence and was scheduled to be executed on April 21, 2022, however, his execution was temporarily reprieved by Governor Bill Lee due to an oversight in the preparation for lethal injection.
Clarence Wayne Dixon was an American convicted murderer. He was convicted of the January 7, 1978, murder of 21-year-old Deana Lynne Bowdoin in Tempe, Arizona. The murder went unsolved until 2001, when DNA profiling linked him to the crime. Dixon, who was serving a life sentence for a 1986 sexual assault conviction, was found guilty of Bowdoin's murder and was formally sentenced to death on January 24, 2008. He was executed by lethal injection on May 11, 2022, in the state's first execution in nearly eight years, since the botched execution of Joseph Wood in 2014.
