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[lead paragraph of entire article ---> add in later at correct place separate from "Among Races" section]

In the United States, capital punishment is a legal penalty throughout the country at the federal level, in 27 states, and in American Samoa.[a][1] 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.[2] 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. However, the unique nature of capital punishment being removed and reinstated into law throughout American history at different points in time is related to and aligns with the United States' racial history and its enslavement then prejudice towards Black Americans.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.[3][4][5][6][7] 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.[8] 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 (along with China, Thailand, and Vietnam). It is common practice for the condemned to be administered sedatives prior to execution, regardless of the method used.[9][10][11]

Among races

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Main article: Race and capital punishment in the United States

Statistics

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African Americans make up 41% of death row inmates.[12] African Americans have made up 34% of those actually executed since 1976. Twenty-one white offenders have been executed for the murder of a black person since 1976. During that same period, 299 black offenders have been executed for the murder of a white person.[13] 54% of people wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in the United States are black.[14]

Approximately 13.5% of death row inmates are of Hispanic or Latino descent. In 2019, individuals identified as Hispanic and Latino Americans accounted for 5.5% of homicides.[15] The death penalty exhortation rate for Hispanic and Latino Americans is 8.6%.[14]

Approximately 1.81% of death row inmates are of Asian descent.[16]

Racial History

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Capital punishment in the United States has a strong correlation with the history of slavery and lynchings in the United States.[17] States where slavery was legal before the Civil War also saw high numbers of lynchings of Black people by white mobs throughout the end of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century. These states include, but are not limited to Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.[18] These same states with the highest accounted lynchings, statistically also have the highest rates of capital punishment sentences and executions today.[17]

The Racial Relationship Between Lynchings and Capital Punishment
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Once white plantation slaveowners lost full ownership of Blacks following the Emancipation Proclamation and then officially with the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865, they used lynchings, both legally under the security of Black Codes and illegally, to maintain their white dominance and threateningly prevent Blacks from challenging their subordinate place in society.[19] Many Black men, women, and even kids, were sent to jail to participate in slave-like work while some others even faced capital punishment, often in the form of lynching, for their crimes because of these Black Codes and other unjust laws.[20]  These lynchings were able to be carried out particularly because many former Confederate soldiers held positions within southern police forces, as state officials, and even as judges.[21]

Even after the passing of the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which weakened the strength of Black Codes and supported the 14th Amendment, the lynching of Blacks by whites saw an increase in numbers.[22] This is primarily due to the fact that during this Reconstruction time period, the terrorist hate group, the Ku Klux Klan (K.K.K.) was secretly created in 1865 by former Confederates and carried out mass terrorizations and lynchings of Black people.[21]

After the end of the Reconstruction in 1877, when federal troops were removed from southern states in which they assisted in upholding the 14th Amendment's promises of equal protection,[22] Jim Crow laws began to gain traction within southern states and enforced segregation and the oppression of Black Americans in all facets of life. These Jim Crow laws were considered legal under the Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson, and allowed for the unfair treatment and protection of lynchings all the way up until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

During and following the Civil Rights era, different acts and laws prevented as many illegal lynchings by the general public from occurring in the United States, capital punishment became a popular, newly legalized way for racist white populations to control Black people and install fear in their daily lives.[23] Based on the disproportionate number of Black Americans sentenced to death during the early and mid-20th century, often as a result of petty or unproved crimes, it became evident that capital punishment was a way whites could still get away with committing the same murders of Black people in an institutionally hidden way. Thus, in 1972, the Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia that capital punishment was unconstitutional. This decision only led to once again an increase in the illegal lynchings of Black people by the general public.[23]

Therefore, in 1976 the Supreme Court decision in Gregg v. Georgia [24] upheld the death penalty and overturned Furman v. Georgia based on the fear that lynchings by the public would rise if the death penalty did not remain in place. Historical lynchings disproportionately affected Black people and capital punishment today still disproportionately affects Black people.[25]

Although the lynchings of Black people decreased in the late 1900s and early 2000s with the legality of capital punishment reinstated, lynching did not become a federal crime until 2022 under the Emmett Till Antilynching Act when President Biden signed it into law, over a hundred years after it was originally proposed.[26] 21st century legal scholars, Civil Rights lawyers, and advocates, like Michelle Alexander, often refer to both past and modern police officers and officials of the United States' criminal justice system's as legalized, modern lynch mobs because they have the ability to sentence one to life in prison or with the death penalty under the law but with the jurisdiction of potentially incorporating their personal, racial biases.[27] The ability for a Black person to be convicted to death, with the potential that racial bias was used in their sentencing, was upheld during the McCleskey v. Kemp court case in Georgia.[28][27] Groups like the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund (LDF) have continuously worked and continue to work on abolishing capital punishment based on its historically racist associations with enslavement and lynching, and also its disproportionate impact on racial minority communities.[29]

  1. ^ Although capital punishment is, in theory, a legal punishment, there are currently no statutes that govern the execution of a sentence of death, resulting in a situation where life imprisonment is the de facto highest punishment in American Samoa.
  1. ^ "Death Penalty States [2022]". Death Penalty Info. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
  2. ^ "States and capital punishment". National Conference of State Legislatures. Retrieved June 23, 2017.
  3. ^ Leigh B. Bienen (2010). Murder and Its Consequences: Essays on Capital Punishment in America (2nd ed.). Northwestern University Press. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-8101-2697-8.
  4. ^ Elisabeth Reichert (2011). Social Work and Human Rights: A Foundation for Policy and Practice. Columbia University Press. p. 89. ISBN 978-0-231-52070-6.
  5. ^ Russil Durrant (2013). An Introduction to Criminal Psychology. Routledge. p. 268. ISBN 978-1-136-23434-7.
  6. ^ Clifton D. Bryant; Dennis L. Peck (2009). Encyclopedia of Death & Human Experience. Sage Publications. p. 144. ISBN 978-1-4129-5178-4.
  7. ^ Cliff Roberson (2015). Constitutional Law and Criminal Justice, Second Edition. CRC Press. p. 188. ISBN 978-1-4987-2120-2.
  8. ^ "Lethal injection". capitalpunishmentuk.org. Retrieved March 16, 2016. China...Guatemala, Philippines, Thailand...Vietnam
  9. ^ "The brutal way Saudi Arabia treats the people it is going to execute". The Independent. October 13, 2015.
  10. ^ "The confronting truth behind executions". NewsComAu. February 17, 2015.
  11. ^ Welsh-Huggins, Andrew (November 5, 2006). "States give sedatives to inmates before execution". Helena Independent Record. Associated Press.
  12. ^ "Racial Demographics". Death Penalty Information Center.
  13. ^ "Executions by Race and Race of Victim". Death Penalty Information Center.
  14. ^ a b "Exonerations by Race". Death Penalty Information Center.
  15. ^ "Hispanics and the Death Penalty". Death Penalty Information Center. Retrieved February 22, 2016.
  16. ^ a b Rigby, David; Seguin, Charles (2021-03). "Capital Punishment and the Legacies of Slavery and Lynching in the United States". The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 694 (1): 205–219. doi:10.1177/00027162211016277. ISSN 0002-7162. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  17. ^ Jacobs, David; Carmichael, Jason T.; Kent, Stephanie L. (2005-08). "Vigilantism, Current Racial Threat, and Death Sentences". American Sociological Review. 70 (4): 656–677. doi:10.1177/000312240507000406. ISSN 0003-1224. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  18. ^ Jacobs, David; Carmichael, Jason T.; Kent, Stephanie L. (2005-08). "Vigilantism, Current Racial Threat, and Death Sentences". American Sociological Review. 70 (4): 656–677. doi:10.1177/000312240507000406. ISSN 0003-1224. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  19. ^ "Racial Demographics". Death Penalty Information Center.
  20. ^ a b Editors, History com. "Jim Crow Laws". HISTORY. Retrieved 2022-12-07. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  21. ^ a b "The Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws | National Geographic Society". education.nationalgeographic.org. Retrieved 2022-12-07.
  22. ^ a b Rigby, David; Seguin, Charles (2021-03). "Capital Punishment and the Legacies of Slavery and Lynching in the United States". The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 694 (1): 205–219. doi:10.1177/00027162211016277. ISSN 0002-7162. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  23. ^ "The History of the Death Penalty: A Timeline". Death Penalty Information Center. Retrieved 2022-12-07.
  24. ^ Rigby, David; Seguin, Charles (2021-03). "Capital Punishment and the Legacies of Slavery and Lynching in the United States". The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 694 (1): 205–219. doi:10.1177/00027162211016277. ISSN 0002-7162. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  25. ^ "More Than a Century After it Was First Proposed, President Biden Signs Historic Law Making Lynching a Federal Crime". Death Penalty Information Center. Retrieved 2022-12-15.
  26. ^ a b Alexander, Michelle (2010). The New Jim Crow. New York, New York: The New Press. pp. 108–159.
  27. ^ "McCleskey v. Kemp". Oyez. Retrieved 2022-12-16.
  28. ^ Steiker, Carol S.; Steiker, Jordan M. (2020-01-13). "The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of the Death Penalty in the United States". Annual Review of Criminology. 3 (1): 299–315. doi:10.1146/annurev-criminol-011518-024721. ISSN 2572-4568.
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