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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 punishment under the criminal justice system of the United States federal government. It can be imposed for treason, espionage, murder, large-scale drug trafficking, or attempted murder of a witness, juror, or court officer in certain cases.
In the U.S. state of California, capital punishment is a legal penalty. However it is not allowed to be carried out as of March 2019, because executions were halted by an official moratorium ordered by Governor Gavin Newsom. Prior to the moratorium, executions were frozen by a federal court order since 2006, and the litigation resulting in the court order has been on hold since the promulgation of the moratorium. Thus, there will be a court-ordered moratorium on executions after the termination of Newsom's moratorium if capital punishment remains a legal penalty in California by then.
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.
Rainey Bethea, was the last person publicly executed in the United States. Bethea, who confessed to the rape and killing of a 70-year-old woman named Lischia Edwards, was convicted of her rape and publicly hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky. Mistakes in performing the hanging, and the surrounding media circus, contributed to the end of public executions in the United States.
The use of capital punishment by the United States military is a legal punishment in martial criminal justice. Despite its legality, capital punishment has not been imposed by the U.S. military in over sixty years.
Capital punishment was abolished in Virginia on March 24, 2021, when Governor Ralph Northam signed a bill into law. The law took effect on July 1, 2021. Virginia is the 23rd state to abolish the death penalty, and the first southern state in United States history to do so.
Harold I. McQueen Jr. was an American man who was the first criminal executed by the state of Kentucky after the reinstatement of capital punishment in the United States in 1976. McQueen was sentenced to death on April 8, 1981 for shooting and killing an unarmed store clerk, Rebecca O'Hearn, while robbing the store in which she worked in Richmond, committed on January 17, 1980.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Japan. In practice, the death penalty applies only to aggravated murder, but the current Penal Code and several laws lists 14 crimes for which the death penalty applies, including conspiracy to commit civil war, conspiracy with a foreign power to provoke war against Japan, murder, obstruction of the operation of railroads, ships, or airplanes resulting in the death of the victim, poisoning of the water supply resulting in the death of the victim, intentional flooding, use of a bomb, and arson of a dwelling. Executions are carried out by long drop hanging, and take place at one of the seven execution chambers located in major cities across the country.
The Kentucky State Penitentiary (KSP), also known as the "Castle on the Cumberland," is a maximum security and supermax prison with capacity for 856 prisoners located in Eddyville, Kentucky on Lake Barkley on the Cumberland River, about 4.8 kilometres (3 mi) from downtown Eddyville. It is managed by the Kentucky Department of Corrections. Completed in 1886, it is Kentucky's oldest prison facility and the only commonwealth-owned facility with supermax units. The penitentiary houses Kentucky's male death row inmates and the commonwealth's execution facility. As of 2015 it had approximately 350 staff members and an annual operating budget of $20 million. In most cases, inmates are not sent directly to the penitentiary after sentencing, but are sent there because of violent or disruptive behavior committed in other less secure correctional facilities in the commonwealth. This was Kentucky's second penitentiary. The first Kentucky State Penitentiary in Frankfort was made uninhabitable from the 1937 flood.
Capital punishment in Connecticut formerly existed as an available sanction for a criminal defendant upon conviction for the commission of a capital offense. Since the 1976 United States Supreme Court decision in Gregg v. Georgia until Connecticut repealed capital punishment in 2012, Connecticut had only executed one person, Michael Bruce Ross in 2005. Initially, the 2012 law allowed executions to proceed for those still on death row and convicted under the previous law, but on August 13, 2015, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that applying the death penalty only for past cases was unconstitutional.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Cuba, however it is seldom used. The last executions were in 2003. National legislation provides for death penalty for murder, threatening to commit murder, aggravated rape, terrorism, hijacking, piracy, drug trafficking and manufacturing, espionage, and treason. The typical method is execution by firing squad.
Hanging has been practiced legally in the United States of America from before the nation's birth, up to 1972 when the United States Supreme Court found capital punishment to be in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Four years later, the Supreme Court overturned its previous ruling, and in 1976, capital punishment was again legalized in the United States. As of 2021, three states have laws that specify hanging as an available secondary method of execution.
Marco Allen Chapman was a convicted murderer and the most recent person executed by the Commonwealth of Kentucky. He was executed on November 21, 2008 by lethal injection at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville, Kentucky. Chapman was executed for a series of murders he committed on August 23, 2002, in Warsaw, Kentucky on Weldon Way, killing two children, Chelbi Sharon, 7, and Cody Sharon, 6, by stabbing after he had raped and stabbed their mother, Carolyn Marksberry, the city clerk of Warsaw at the time, over 15 times. 10-year-old Courtney Sharon played dead after she had also been stabbed by Chapman several times, and escaped.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of South Carolina. Between 1718 and 2021, more than 680 people have been executed in South Carolina. After the nationwide capital punishment ban was overturned in 1976, South Carolina has executed 43 people.
Capital punishment is a legal punishment in Pennsylvania.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Kentucky.
Capital punishment in Malawi is a legal punishment for certain crimes. The country abolished the death penalty by a Malawian Supreme Court ruling in 2021, but it was soon reinstated. However, the country is currently under a death penalty moratorium, which has been in place since the latest execution in 1992.
References
- ↑ "Execution Database". Death Penalty Information Center . Retrieved July 30, 2022.
- ↑ Williams, Chris (November 21, 2018). "Kentucky has not executed a death row inmate in 10 years, here's why". WHAS-TV . Archived from the original on July 30, 2022. Retrieved July 30, 2022.