Society and Culture > Crime & Law Enforcement > Incarceration and Capital Punishment

Number of Persons Executed¹ by Jurisdiction, 1930–2008

This table includes two sets of data about executions in the United States. The first shows the number of executions from 1930 to 1972, when the death penalty was abolished. The second data set displays the number of executions in each U.S. state since the ban on the death penalty was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976.

	Number executed since
State	1930	1976²
Texas	652	423
Georgia	405	43
New York	329	0
California	305	13
North Carolina	302	43
Florida	230	66
South Carolina	197	39
Ohio	191	28
Virginia	186	102
Alabama	169	38
Mississippi	161	10
Louisiana	160	27
Pennsylvania	155	3
Arkansas	145	27
Oklahoma	139	88
Missouri	128	66
Kentucky	105	3
Illinois	102	12
Tennessee	94	4
New Jersey	74	0
Maryland	73	5
Arizona	60	23
Indiana	57	19
Washington	51	4
Colorado	48	1
Nevada	41	12
District of Columbia	40	0
West Virginia	40	0
Federal system	36	3
Massachusetts	27	0
Delaware	26	14
Connecticut	22	1
Oregon	21	2
Utah	19	6
Iowa	18	0
Kansas	15	0
New Mexico	9	1
Montana	8	3
Wyoming	8	1
Nebraska	7	3
Idaho	4	1
Vermont	4	0
New Hampshire	1	0
South Dakota	1	1
U.S. total	4,863	1,135

NOTE: 24 people were executed in 2008.

1. Executed under civil authority; military authorities carried out an additional 160 executions, 1930–1997.

2. In 1972 the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment, as it was then administered, was “cruel and unusual” and therefore unconstitutional. On July 1, 1976, however, the Court overturned the ruling by a 7–2 decision, and capital punishment was reinstated.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, and Death Penalty Information Center. Web: www.deathpenaltyinfo.org .

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