U.S. Government
|
Year of Reenactment
(since 1972 suspension) |
1988 | |
|
Year of First Execution
(since reenactment) |
2001 | |
|
History
|
method employed in the state where the conviction takes place |
|
|
Current Method
|
method employed in the state where the conviction takes place | |
 |
|
|
The Federal Government has a sentence of
life without parole.
There have been three executions by the United
States
government since 2001: Timothy McVeigh from Oklahoma on June 11, 2001,
Juan Raul Garza of Texas on June 19, 2001, and Louis Jones, Jr. of
Texas on March 18, 2003. The three cases involved one white, one black,
and one hispanic male, and all came from the south.
For information on the current population of
the Federal Death Row, click here.
A 2000 study by the Department of Justice
has revealed racial and geographical disparities in the application of
the federal death penalty.
In addition to the death penalty laws in many
states, the federal government has also employed capital punishment for
certain federal offenses. In 1972, the United States Supreme Court
ruled that all state death penalty statues were unconstitutional
because they allowed for arbitrary and capricious application. The
federal statute suffered from the same infirmities as the state
statutes and no death sentence employing the older federal statutes has
been upheld. In 1988, a new federal death penalty statute was enacted
for murder in the course of a drug-kingpin conspiracy. In 1994, the
federal death penalty was expanded to some 60 different offenses.
