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Three states abolished the death penalty for murder during the 19th century: Michigan (which Only executed 1 prisoner and is the first government in the English-speaking world to abolish capital punishment) [40] in 1847, Wisconsin in 1853, and Maine in 1887.
In the late 1980s, Senator Alfonse D'Amato, from New York State, sponsored a bill to make certain federal drug crimes eligible for the death penalty as he was frustrated by the lack of a death penalty in his home state. [13] The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 restored the death penalty under federal law for drug offenses and some types of murder. [14]
Anti-death penalty groups specifically argue that the death penalty is unfairly applied to African Americans. African Americans have constituted 34.5 percent of those persons executed since the death penalty's reinstatement in 1976 and 41 percent of death row inmates as of April 2018, [ 84 ] despite representing only 13 percent of the general ...
The Death Penalty Information Center’s recent annual report contained good news for those opposed to capital punishment. The number of new death sentences remained small by historical standards ...
Texas executed eight inmates last year and five this year. The following are the five states with the most executions since the early 1980s, according to the Death Penalty Information Center ...
Capital punishment was abolished in Virginia on March 24, 2021, when Governor Ralph Northam signed a bill into law. The law took effect on July 1, 2021. Virginia is the 23rd state to abolish the death penalty, and the first southern state in United States history to do so.
Massachusetts judges wielded this new-found discretion in various ways for twenty years, before fines, incarceration, or the death penalty became the sole available sanctions under the state's penal code. [98] Other states—e.g., New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut—also lagged in their shift toward incarceration. [99]
At yearend 2010, the death penalty was authorized by 36 states and the federal government (table 1). While New Mexico repealed the death penalty in 2009 (Laws 2009, ch. 11 § 5), the repeal was not retroactive. As of December 31, 2010, New Mexico held two men under previously imposed death sentences, and one person was awaiting sentencing