More than 13,000 people have been legally executed since colonial times, most of them in the early 20^th Century. By the 1930s as many as 150 people were executed each year. By 1967, capital punishment had virtually halted in the United States, pending the outcome of several court challenges. In 1972 the existing state laws were applied in an "arbitrary and capricious" manner and, thus, violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, and the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantees of equal protection of the laws and due process.

Thirty-seven states now have laws authorizing the death penalty, as does the military. A dozen states in the Middle West and Northeast have abolished capital punishment, two in the last century. Alaska and Hawaii have never had the death penalty. Most executions have taken place in the states of the Deep South.

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Seven Myths Which Support the Death Penaly

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