Pena De Muerte

Capital punishment in the United States
Capital punishment in the United States is administered for a wide variety of crimes ranging from drug trafficking to aggravated murder. However, in practice, it is reserved only for homicide-related crimes including aggravated murder, felony murder, and contract killing. Capital punishment was a penalty at common law, for many felonies, and was enforcedin all the American colonies prior to the Declaration of Independence. The death penalty is currently a legal sentence in 33 states and in the federal civilian and military legal systems.

The methods of execution and the crimes subject to the penalty vary by jurisdiction and have varied widely throughout time, though the most common method in recent decades has been lethal injection.Thirty-three jurisdictions continue to have it by law. There were 37 executions in the United States in 2008,[1] the lowest number since 1994[2] (largely due to lethal injection litigation revolving around a now resolved constitutional question).[3][4] There were 43 executions in 2011, all by lethal injection.[5] In 2011, 13 states executed 43 inmates; in 2010, 46 people were executed.[6]

Capitalpunishment is a contentious social issue in the US. While historically a large majority of the American public has favored it in cases of murder, the extent of this support has varied over time. There has long been strong opposition to capital punishment in the United States from certain sectors of the population, and as of 2012, seventeen states (as well as Washington, D.C.) have banned its use.[7] Whilethe level of public support today is lower than it was in the 1980s and 1990s (reaching an all-time high of 80 percent in 1994), it has been largely static over the past decade.[8] A 2011 Gallup poll showed 61 percent of Americans favored it in cases of murder while 35 percent opposed it, the lowest level of support recorded by Gallup since 1972.[9] When life in prison without parole is listed asa poll option, the public is more evenly divided; a 2010 Gallup poll found 49 percent preferring the death penalty and 46 percent favoring life without parole.[10]


History

The first recorded death sentence in the British North American colonies was carried out in 1608 on Captain George Kendall,[11] who was executed by firing squad at the Jamestown colony for allegedly spying for theSpanish government.[12]

The Espy file,[13] compiled by M. Watt Espy and John Ortiz Smykla, lists 15,269 people executed in the United States and its predecessor colonies between 1608 and 1991. In the period from 1930 to 2002, 4,661 executions were carried out in the U.S, about two-thirds of them in the first 20 years.[14] Additionally, the United States Army executed 135 soldiers between 1916 and2012.[15][16][17]

The largest single execution in United States history was the hanging of 38 Dakota people convicted of murder and rape during the brutal Dakota War of 1862. They were executed simultaneously on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota. A single blow from an axe cut the rope that held the large four-sided platform, and the prisoners (except for one whose rope had broken and whohad to be re-hanged) fell to their deaths.[18] The second-largest mass execution was also a hanging: the execution of 13 African American soldiers for taking part in the Houston Riot in 1917. The largest non-military public mass execution in one of the original thirteen colonies occurred in 1723, when 26 convicted pirates were hanged in Newport, Rhode Island by order of the Admiralty Court.[19][edit]States without capital punishment


[edit]Michigan

Historically, several states have always been without capital punishment, the earliest being Michigan, which has not conducted an execution since it entered the Union. (However, one federal execution occurred in Michigan in 1938.) Shortly after attaining statehood, Michigan abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes, becoming...