As of August 8, 2024, Texas has executed a total of 598 people since the reinstatement of capital punishment in the United States in 1976. Oklahoma had the second-highest number of executed inmates, with 125 executions carried out since 1976.

As of August 8, three executions were carried out by Alabama and two executions were carried out by Missouri in 2024. Another two executions were carried out in Oklahoma in the same year. Death penalty Since 2015, Texas has been the state most likely to perform the most executions in the United States. However, the U.S. government and military also enforce death penalties. Since 1976, 1,392 executions in the country have been conducted through lethal injection. The United States is one of the countries around the world still using capital punishment. It is estimated that China executed a thousand prisoners in 2022, while Iran executed approximately 314 people . Some 55 percent of U.S. citizens stated that they thought capital punishment was morally acceptable . About 35 percent of death penalty supporters reasoned that this form of punishment was “an eye for an eye” due to the crime, while 14 percent of supporters believed that the death penalty could save taxpayers money due to costs associated with prisons. In general, most states require some form of first-degree murder as the crime that is punishable by death. However, 40 percent of denouncers of the death penalty stated that it was wrong to take a life, while 17 percent reasoned that the persons may be wrongly convicted. Support for capital punishment reached a peak in 1991 at 76 percent of the population agreeing.

As of 2023, the U.S. state of Texas had executed 586 death row inmates since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated. Over the same time period, Oklahoma executed 123 people, and the U.S. federal government executed 16 people.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN THE UNITED STATES, 1973-2018 provides annual data on prisoners under a sentence of death, as well as those who had their sentences commuted or vacated and prisoners who were executed. This study examines basic sociodemographic classifications including age, sex, race and ethnicity, marital status at time of imprisonment, level of education, and state and region of incarceration. Criminal history information includes prior felony convictions and prior convictions for criminal homicide and the legal status at the time of the capital offense. Additional information is provided on those inmates removed from death row by yearend 2018. The dataset consists of one part which contains 9,583 cases. The file provides information on inmates whose death sentences were removed in addition to information on those inmates who were executed. The file also gives information about inmates who received a second death sentence by yearend 2018 as well as inmates who were already on death row.

In 2023, ** death row inmates were executed in the United States. During the previous year, there were ** executions in the country. However, this is a significant decrease from 2000, when ** death row inmates were executed.

In 2021, a total of 11 prisoners were executed in the United States, compared to a total of 17 prisoners who were executed the year prior. 1999 saw the most prisoners executed in the United States, with 98 executions.

As of August 2024, a total of 1,413 people had been executed by lethal injection in the United States since 1976, making it the most common method of execution in the country. Over that same time period, a further 163 people were executed via electrocution.

As of November 30, six Black prisoners were executed in the United States, compared to 15 white prisoners who were executed, in 2023. 24 executions were carried out in the United States in 2023 as of November 30.

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This activity uses Map Viewer. ResourcesMapTeacher guide Student worksheetGet startedOpen the map.Use the teacher guide to explore the map with your class or have students work through it on their own with the worksheet.New to GeoInquiriesTM? See Getting to Know GeoInquiries.Social Studies standardsC3: D2.Civ.8.6-8 – Analyze ideas and principles contained in the founding documents of the United States, and explain how they influence the social and political system. C3:D2.Civ.14.9-12 – Analyze historical, contemporary, and emerging means of changing societies, promoting the common good.C3:D2.Civ.11.9-12 – Evaluate multiple procedures for making governmental decisions at the local, state, national, and international levels in terms of the civic purposes achieved.Learning outcomesStudents will interpret map data as they identify and explain differences in the distribution of the death penalty throughout the United States.Students will analyze the relationship between executions and prisoners on death row.More activitiesAll Government GeoInquiriesAll GeoInquiries

Abstract (en): This data collection provides annual data on prisoners under a sentence of death and on prisoners whose sentences were commuted or vacated. The data furnish basic sociodemographic classifications including age, sex, race and ethnicity, marital status at time of imprisonment, level of education, and state and region of incarceration. Criminal history information includes prior felony convictions, prior convictions for criminal homicide, and legal status at the time of the capital offense. Additional information is provided on those inmates removed from death row by yearend 1986, inmates receiving a second capital punishment sentence in 1987, and inmates who were executed. ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Standardized missing values.; Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.. All persons in the United States under sentence of death between 1973 and 1987. 2008-11-12 Minor changes have been made to the metadata.2008-10-30 All parts have been moved to restricted access and are available only using the restricted access procedures.2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable, and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to reflect these additions.1997-05-30 SAS data definition statements are now available for this collection, and the SPSS data definition statements were updated. Funding insitution(s): United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics. (1) Information in this dataset collected prior to 1972 is in many cases incomplete and reflects vestiges in the reporting process. (2) Users should note that Part 1, the Combined File contains duplicate identification numbers due to changes in the status of some inmates. These identification numbers were assigned by the Bureau of the Census and have no purpose outside this dataset.

In Texas, three people were executed in 2020, the highest number of any U.S. state. A ranking of the most dangerous cities in the world based on murder rate per capita can be found here.

In 2021, an average of 233 months elapsed between sentencing and execution for inmates on death row in the United States. This is an increase from 1990, when an average of 95 months passed between sentencing and execution.

In 2021, around 12.2 percent of prisoners on death row in the United States were between 40 and 44 years of age. Most prisoners on death row, at 17.6 percent, were between the ages of 50 and 54 years old. The death penalty is authorized in 27 states and by the federal government.

This poll is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. Respondents were asked to give their opinions of President George W. Bush and his handling of the presidency, foreign policy, the economy, and the environment, as well as their views on the recent energy shortages and Timothy McVeigh's impending execution. Respondents also specified the single most important problem facing the government, gave their approval ratings of Vice President Dick Cheney and Congress, and gave their views on the national economy and whether it was getting better or worse, or staying the same. Those polled stated whether they supported or opposed the death penalty and if opposed, the reason why, the type of penalty that should be imposed for murder, whether the death penalty is a deterrent to murder, and how many innocent people they believed were executed. Respondents' level of confidence in the Supreme Court was elicited along with their opinions on whether the United States Senate or the President should appoint justices to the Supreme Court, and whether Bush's Supreme Court nominees would be too conservative, not conservative enough, or about right. Respondents were asked whether it was more important to produce energy or protect the environment, which option Bush favored, and which should be a higher priority for the government - increasing production of petroleum, coal, and natural gas, or encouraging conservation. Respondents also stated whether they would be willing to accept higher prices for electricity and gasoline to protect the environment and what effect an increase in gas prices to $3 per gallon would have on them. They were asked whether they approved of building more nuclear power plants to generate electricity and whether they believed that the energy shortages were real or whether the public was just being told there were shortages to justify higher prices. Questions were posed on whether the oil industry had too much influence on the Bush administration's energy policies and what effect this influence would have on the administration's energy policies. Respondents were also queried on Timothy McVeigh's impending execution--whether they favored the death penalty for McVeigh, what sentence they would prefer, who, if anyone, should be allowed to view his execution, and whether they would want to watch the execution. They rated the media's handling of the execution, including the amount of time they devoted to covering it. Respondents were asked to assign blame for the California power shortages, decide whether the state or federal government should take responsibility, and state how likely they believed that power shortages were in their area. Respondents also gave their opinions of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the issue of missing documents in Timothy McVeigh's case. Background information on respondents includes age, race, gender, religion, marital status, number of children, education, income classification, whether they had money invested in the stock market, voter status, and political leanings.

Prisoners on death row in the U.S. tend to be men. Only 2.1 percent of those on death row in the United States were women as of December 2021. In the United States, the death penalty is authorized by 27 states and the federal government.

As of 2023, the death penalty was still implemented in 30 African countries. However, no executions had been carried out for the last decade in 16 of these states or territories. In 14 countries, instead, the death penalty was regularly implemented. These were Nigeria, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan, Egypt, and Libya. In 26 African countries, capital punishment is abolished.

In 2023, **** judicial executions were carried out in Singapore, all of which were for drug trafficking. This was lower than the peak in 2022. Singapore's capital punishment laws were put in the international spotlight again in that year, as the city-state conducted a record number of executions once the COVID-19 restrictions were eased and lifted.

The term "lynching" is believed to derive from the name of Charles Lynch, a Virginia planter who presided over an irregular and unofficial court during the Revolutionary War. Lynch's use of extralegal measures to punish those loyal to the British crown, helped to inspire mobs in later years to administer their own form of vigilante justice outside of the courts. Eventually, the term came to describe cases where supposed offenders were executed through mob violence without a proper trial and outside of legal jurisdiction. The most famous examples of these executions in the U.S. were those where the victim was hanged (due to the relatively large amount of photographic evidence); however, there were also cases where the victims were shot, burned or tortured and dismembered, among others. Lynching before Jim Crow In the early years of U.S. independence, lynching was most common along the frontier and in western territories, due to the lack of established or immediate judicial systems, and most studies suggest that these victims were mostly white and Mexican. Possibly the largest case of lynching (and largest case of mass hanging) in the United States, was in Texas in 1862, in what is known as the "Great Hanging at Gainsville"; this was where local slaveholders organized the mob hanging of 41 white men and shot three others, due to their supposed allegiance to the Union. Following the American Civil War, however, lynching became inextricably linked with racial inequality and white supremacy in the southern states of the U.S., and black Americans comprised the vast majority of lynching victims from 1886 onwards. Lynching of black Americans The Compromise of 1877 coincided with the emergence of the Jim Crow era in the southern states; it saw the removal of Union troops from the south and established political structures based on white supremacy and the oppression of minorities. Gradually, many of the rights and protections that were granted to black Americans following emancipation were stripped away. This period also saw a vast increase in the number of lynchings in the country, with the majority of these cases taking place in the south. Within ten years of Reconstruction's end, the number of black lynchings exceeded those of white lynchings, and over the next century it is estimated that there were over 4,700 lynchings across the country. Of the 4,740 lynchings estimated to have taken place between 1882 and 1965, 3,445 of the victims were black; this equates to over 72 percent of the total victims of lynching, despite black Americans making up just 10 to 13 percent of the total population. Of these 4,700 lynchings, around 3,500 took place in former Confederate states, where the share of black victims increased to 86 percent. As the years progressed, organized lynchings became more infrequent and were publicized less, and the implementation of the death penalty is thought to have replaced the sense of justice that lynching brought to its perpetrators. Nonetheless, it was not until 1952 where the U.S. went a full year without any known cases of lynching, and the final lynching cases were recorded in 1964 (although some have classified a number of murders after 1964 as lynchings, due to their connections with race and civil rights).