What is death penalty

A 'corporal' punishment, such as flogging, takes its name from the Latin word for the body. Capital punishment is used in many countries around the world. According to Amnesty International as at May , countries have abolished the death penalty either in law on in practice. Source: Amnesty. In , there was a growing reluctance among those countries that do retain the death penalty to use it in practice. In , only 25 out of 59 countries that retain the death penalty carried out executions.

China executes the most people per year overall, with an estimated figure of 1, in Details of which countries are abolitionist and which are retentionist can be found on the Amnesty website. In China, at least 1, people were executed and at least 7, people were known to have been sentenced to death in These figures represent minimum estimates - real figures are undoubtedly higher.

However, the continued refusal by the Chinese authorities to release public information on the use of the death penalty means that in China the death penalty remains shrouded in secrecy. It is the only state in which electrocution is primary, with firing squad and lethal injection, authorized by statute as secondary methods of execution. In addition to South Carolina, 15 other states have a secondary method of execution authorized by statute.

Secondary methods of execution include electrocution, lethal gas, hanging, nitrogen hypoxia, and firing squad. For example, see La Grand v. Stewart, F. The purple states only have a single method: lethal injection. Blue states have secondary methods of execution. Click on those states to display details on secondary methods. The gray states do not have capital punishment. Note that Colorado and New Hampshire prospectively abolished capital punishment. In Colorado, the governor commuted the sentences of those on death row, but defendants with pending cases at the time of abolition are still eligible for execution and the execution statute is still valid.

In New Hampshire one individual remains on death row. The purple states only have a single method: lethal injection and blue states have both a primary and a secondary method.

Click on those states to display details on specific methods. Over the past decade, several U. The court has abolished the death penalty for mentally disabled offenders Atkins v.

Virginia , , juvenile offenders Roper v. A majority of Americans have concerns about the fairness of the death penalty and whether it serves as a deterrent against serious crime.

More than half of U. Opinions about the death penalty vary by party, education and race and ethnicity. Views of the death penalty differ by religious affiliation.

Around two-thirds of Protestants in the U. Opposition to the death penalty also varies among the religiously unaffiliated. Support for the death penalty is consistently higher in online polls than in phone polls. Survey respondents sometimes give different answers depending on how a poll is conducted. In a series of contemporaneous Pew Research Center surveys fielded online and on the phone between September and August , Americans consistently expressed more support for the death penalty in a self-administered online format than in a survey administered on the phone by a live interviewer.

This pattern was more pronounced among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents than among Republicans and GOP leaners, according to an analysis of the survey results. Phone polls have shown a long-term decline in public support for the death penalty. In phone surveys conducted by Pew Research Center between and , the share of U. Phone surveys conducted by Gallup found a similar decrease in support for capital punishment during this time span. A majority of states have the death penalty, but far fewer use it regularly.

As of July , the death penalty is authorized by 27 states and the federal government — including the U. Department of Justice and the U. But even in many of the jurisdictions that authorize the death penalty, executions are rare: 13 of these states, along with the U.

That includes three states — California , Oregon and Pennsylvania — where governors have imposed formal moratoriums on executions. A growing number of states have done away with the death penalty in recent years, either through legislation or a court ruling. Virginia, which has carried out more executions than any state except Texas since , abolished capital punishment in Death sentences have steadily decreased in recent decades. There were 2, people on death row in the U. New death sentences have also declined sharply: 31 people were sentenced to death in , far below the more than who received death sentences each year between and In recent years, prosecutors in some U.