Death penalty

Capital punishment in numbers

BY Kelly Kiki

Published July 20, 2018

The United States is the only Western country amongst the 53 countries worldwide which still authorize and apply the death penalty. Claims and predictions about the upcoming “death of the death penalty” have been published, but it doesn't seem that they have been proven real. On the occasion of the Texas lethal injection drugs story and of the Tennessee’s new lethal injection procedure, let's go back to '70s and display capital punishment in numbers.

Number of executions

Top-10 states in death penalty use from 1976 onwards

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Executions in percentages

Texas, which traditionally has the largest prison population, applies the death penalty most

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Executions per 100K prisoners

Numbers are calculated according to 2017 data

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NOTE: Would you wish to know more about prison population in the US? Another story is being prepared to be hyperlinked.
SOURCES: Death Penalty Information Center; The Sentencing Project

Inmates' age at the moment of execution

Average age is 41.6 years old. Where average is below and where is above it?

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SOURCE: Death Penalty Information Center

Most inmates were executed just during the previous decade

Lethal injection was used on 1302 prisoners out of 1479 people executed (88.2%)

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SOURCE: Death Penalty Information Center

Methods of execution used by state

It's all about lethal injection

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SOURCE: Death Penalty Information Center

Number of victims per killer executed

1479 inmates have been executed; the average number of victims per criminal is 1.08 people, without taking into account McVeigh's case

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SOURCE: Death Penalty Information Center