Injections, pardons and the 30-year wait. What you need to know about the death penalty in the USA

US President Donald Trump announced the reinstatement of the death penalty on conviction by federal courts immediately after the start of his second term. He canceled the moratorium, which was established under his predecessor Joe Biden. At the same time, 27 states already have the death penalty in place, with more than 2,000 criminals on death row. How in the United States the capital punishment is handed down and by what means the sentence is carried out - in the material of "Izvestia".

What Trump's decree is about

- On the first day of his second term, Trump signed a decree on the restoration of the death penalty. In this document, he criticized not only the moratorium, introduced in 2021, but also the decision of predecessor Joe Biden to replace the sentence with life imprisonment for 37 criminals out of 40, awaiting execution at that time. Trump recalled that the U.S. Constitution recognizes the legality of the death penalty.

- With his executive order, Trump obliged the US attorney general to seek the death penalty for serious crimes. The president additionally indicated that the prosecution should seek the death penalty if a law enforcement officer was killed in the course of a crime or it was committed by an alien without the right to be in the United States.

- Separately, Trump ordered the attorney general to check all 37 pardoned criminals to see if they had committed other crimes for which they could be re-sentenced to death, and to ensure that all states have the necessary stockpile of lethal injections so that executions can be carried out nationwide.

How the death penalty is handed down in the United States

- The US judicial system has a clear division between the federal and state levels. Trump's decisions, like any other president's, can only apply to death sentences handed down by one of the 94 federal district courts. That's a fairly small fraction of the total number of verdicts - while 40 criminals were on death row before Biden's leniency (and only three now), there are about 2,250 people on death row nationwide. Almost all of them are sentenced by their states.

- This disparity is due to the fact that federal district courts have relatively little authority to hear criminal cases, most of which go to state courts. There are several criteria used to determine which court will ultimately hear a case. This may determine whether or not a criminal faces the death penalty.

- Execution upon conviction in federal court is extremely rare in the United States. It was abolished in 1972, but reinstated in 1988 for murder and drug offenses. Gradually, the list of offenses has expanded, with executions not actually carried out for a variety of reasons. In total, 16 federal criminals have been executed in the last 53 years, three under George W. Bush Jr. and 13 during Trump's first term. Only three are now awaiting sentencing - Robert Bowers (Pittsburgh synagogue shooting), Dylann Roof (Charleston church shooting) and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (Boston Marathon attack).

- At the state level, the death penalty does not exist everywhere. 23 states and the District of Columbia have completely abolished it: the first was Michigan in 1847, and the last was Virginia in 2021. Abolition generally applies to future offenses, and for those committed before abolition, execution can still catch up with the offender. Of the remaining 27 states, seven have suspended the death penalty and another five have not executed in more than 10 years. Only 15 states carry out executions fairly regularly. These are mostly Southern and Midwestern states.

- Since 1976, states have executed 1,591 people, including 17 women (one of whom changed sex while incarcerated). The most criminals executed was in 1999, with 98 executions. Since then, both executions and sentences handed down have been decreasing. The record holder in the number of executions among states is Texas, where 591 offenders have been executed. The President of the United States or the Congress cannot influence the implementation of executions by states in any way, only the local governor pardons convicts.

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- The imposition of the death penalty requires compliance with strict conditions. At the federal level and in 23 states, it requires the unanimous decision of 12 jurors who, along with a verdict, recommend punishment. In Alabama, 10 votes are sufficient to reach a verdict; in Florida, eight. In Nebraska, a three-judge panel can impose the death penalty. Only in Montana can a judge alone impose the death penalty.

- Separately, the U.S. has a court system that sentences members of the military. They can be executed for 10 offenses committed at any time and five more for crimes committed only during wartime. Executions by a military court are even rarer - the last time it was carried out was in 1961. There are now four people on death row, one of whom, Ronald Gray, has been in prison for more than 36 years.

What methods of execution are available in the United States

- Currently, the predominant method of execution in the US is lethal injection. It is used by default in 26 states out of 27, as well as after conviction by military courts. However, this method has its drawbacks - the injection may fail or the correctional facility may not have the necessary chemicals, as many pharmaceutical companies refuse to supply drugs for executions. In addition, because it is a relatively new method, some states continue to have legal disputes about the legality of its use.

- The only state that executes by default in a different way is South Carolina. There, the electric chair is used for this purpose. That said, every state has an alternative method if the primary method is unavailable or if the offender wants to make a choice. It can be the electric chair, gas chamber (either with poison gas or oxygen reduction) or firing squad. In the past, including the colonial era, hanging (by rope or in chains), burning, bludgeoning, and impalement, and pacing may have been used.

- Federal courts sentence criminals to the method of execution available in the state where the court is located. If the death penalty has been abolished in that state, the judge chooses to execute the state where it exists. In practice, this means that in most cases it will also be lethal injection.

Most famous executions

- A total of six people have been executed in cases involving the assassination of U.S. presidents. Four were hanged in 1865 for participating in a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Among those executed was a woman, Mary Surratt, whose boarding house was frequented by assassin John Wilkes Booth. In 1882, Charles Guiteau, who shot President James Garfield, was hanged, and in 1901, Leon Czolgosz, who mortally wounded William McKinley, was executed in the electric chair.

- The largest mass execution in U.S. history took place in 1862. At the height of the Civil War, a Sioux Indian uprising took place in Minnesota. During its suppression, more than a thousand Indians were captured. 303 of them were sentenced to death for murder and plunder, but Lincoln approved the execution of only 38 of them. They were hanged simultaneously under the supervision of 2,000 military men.

- One of the most famous executions in history was the case of anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. They were sentenced for the murder of three people during a robbery. The trial was politically colored, and a campaign was organized to find them innocent. After Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in the electric chair in 1927, many streets in Soviet cities and a pencil factory in Moscow were named after them.

- In 1936, the last public execution took place in the United States. To see how the black rapist and murderer Rainey Bethea would be hanged, about 20 thousand people gathered. Such close attention was explained by the fact that the local sheriff was to execute the sentence, and it turned out to be a woman Florence Thompson. However, she herself delegated the case to a former policeman, which the audience did not know. The unhealthy hype surrounding the incident led to the subsequent abandonment of public executions.

- Private Edward Slowik in 1944 became known as the only American soldier executed for desertion during World War II, even though about 21,000 men left their positions during the conflict. The story was publicized and impressed the American public. The death of the 24-year-old soldier was mentioned in his novel "Slaughterhouse Five" by writer Kurt Vonnegut, and singer Frank Sinatra planned to make a movie about it.

- In 1957, Jack Gilbert Graham was executed using a gas chamber. He was accused of killing his mother by planting explosives in a suitcase she took with her on an airplane. The bomb exploded during the flight, killing 44 people. Graham did this in order to get insurance for his mother's death - an insurance policy he bought right at the airport she was flying out of. The murder trial was the first to be televised in the United States.

- In 2001, Timothy McVeigh became the first convict in 38 years to be executed by a federal court. Four years earlier, he had carried out the Oklahoma City bombing. As a result, 167 people were killed and another rescue worker died while removing the rubble. It was the largest terrorist attack in U.S. history before the Sept. 11 attacks. McVeigh's death was watched live by more than 200 relatives of his victims. Notably, McVeigh was only convicted of murdering eight government employees who died in the bombing. Oklahoma State charges for the deaths of another 160 people were not filed because of the death sentence already handed down.