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****Virginia abolished the death penalty on March 24, 2021, and those on death row at that time had their sentences commuted. *****In 2018, the Washington Supreme Court has declared its capital sentencing procedures unconstitutional and has resentenced all death-row prisoners to life without parole.
Lethal injection is the most widely-used method of execution, but many states authorize other methods including electrocution, lethal gas, and firing squad. The primary means of execution in the U.S. have been hanging, electrocution, the gas chamber, firing squad, and lethal injection.
Until the 1890s, hanging was the primary method of execution used in the United States. Hanging was still authorized in Delaware and Washington before those states abolished the death penalty in 2016 and 2018, although both had lethal injection as an alternative method of execution.
First used in the United States in 1982, lethal injection has since been adopted by China, Guatemala, Maldives, Nigeria, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Only ever used by the United States and Philippines. Only South Carolina has it as the primary method.
The legal administration of the death penalty in the United States typically involves five steps: (1) prosecutorial decision to seek the death penalty (2) sentencing, (3) direct review, (4) state collateral review, and (5) federal habeas corpus.
It provides data on which jurisdictions have the death penalty, which jurisdictions carried out an execution in 2021, and which methods of execution are authorized in each jurisdiction. The report also presents demographics (including sex, race and ethnicity, age, and education) and the criminal history of persons under sentence of death.
jection. The Supreme Court has never found a method of execution to be unconstitutional, though some methods have been declared unconstitutional by stat. courts. The predominance of lethal injection as the preferred means of execution in all states in the modern era may have put off any judgment by the Court regarding older.