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.
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.
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.
Following the historic Lindbergh kidnapping, the United States Congress passed a federal kidnapping statute—known as the Federal Kidnapping Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1) —which was intended to let federal authorities step in and pursue kidnappers once they had crossed state lines with their victim. The act became law in 1932. In 1934, the act was amended to provide exception for parents who abduct their own minor children and made a death sentence possible in cases where the victim was not released unharmed.
Clarence Ray Allen was an American criminal and proxy killer who was executed in 2006 at the age of 76 by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison in California for the murders of three people. Allen was the second-oldest inmate at the time to be executed in the United States since 1976.
Donald Henry "Pee Wee" Gaskins Jr. was an American serial killer and rapist from South Carolina who stabbed, shot, drowned, and poisoned more than a dozen people. Before his convictions for murder, Gaskins had a long history of criminal activities resulting in prison sentences for assault, burglary, and statutory rape. His last arrest was for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, 13-year-old Kim Gehlken, who had gone missing in September 1975. During their search for the missing girl, police discovered eight bodies buried in shallow graves near Gaskins's home in Prospect, South Carolina.
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.
Michael Hubert Hughes is a convicted American serial killer on death row in San Quentin. Hughes was initially sentenced to life without parole for the murders of four women and girls in California. Later, he was convicted of committing three further murders of women, linked to the crimes via DNA profiling. At the second trial, he was sentenced to the death penalty.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in South Korea. As of December 2012, there were at least 60 people in South Korea on death row. The method of execution is hanging.
Gary Ray Bowles was an American serial killer who was executed in 2019 for the murders of six men in 1994. He is sometimes referred to as The I-95 Killer since most of his victims lived close to the Interstate 95 highway.
On April 2, 2012, a gunman shot at people inside Oikos University, a Korean Christian college in Oakland, California, United States, killing seven people and injuring three others. One L. Goh, a former student at the school, was taken into custody and identified as the suspect in the shooting. It is the deadliest mass killing in the city's history.
Manuel "Manny" Pardo Jr. was an American serial killer in South Florida, a former police officer who had previously been employed by the Florida Highway Patrol and later the Sweetwater Police Department in Miami-Dade county, active from January to April 1986, often working with partner, and co-defendant, Rolando Garcia. Over the course of those months, Pardo had nine known victims. These events led to his arrest and conviction for 9 counts of first degree murder in the mid 1980s which he received the death penalty for, and ultimately his execution in December 2012.
Anthony McKnight was an American serial killer, rapist, kidnapper, and sex offender. Between September 1985 and January 1986, he attacked ten women in Oakland, California, killing five of them. In 2008, he was found guilty of these murders and sentenced to death, but died awaiting execution in 2019.
Charles Arnett Stevens is an American serial killer, responsible for shooting eight people over four months in Northern California in 1989, killing four of them. He garnered the nickname The I-580 Killer as he committed all of his crimes on an 82-mile-long highway known as "California Interstate-580". Ballistic evidence exposed his involvement, and he was sentenced to death. He currently resides in San Quentin State Prison.
Cimarron Bernard Bell is an American serial killer who was convicted for the murders of his girlfriend and three men in California, committed during separate incidents in 2003 and 2004. Sentenced to death for the killings, he remains on death row awaiting execution.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland. Despite its legality, no executions have been carried out since 1983. Therefore, Eswatini is classified as "abolitionist in practice."
Mervin Ray Hughes, known as The Serial Shooter, is an American serial killer who shot and killed one man in 1986 and later shot and killed two more people during a January 1999 shooting spree in Oakland, which also injured ten others. He is also suspected of killing a fourth person in 1992, though charges in that case were dropped. Hughes was sentenced to death in 2005 and remains on death row.
