History of the Death Penalty

By GSkorski16

  • First death

    Captain George Kendall becomes the first recorded execution in the new colonies.

  • First Women killed

    Jane Champion becomes the first woman executed in the new colonies.

  • Created

    In the eighteenth century B.C. - the first death penalty laws were established. The Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon codified the death penalty for twenty-five different crimes, although murder was not one of them.

  • The first federal death

    The first known federal execution was of Thomas Bird for murder on the high seas

  • Cases involving the death penalty

    Over 100 of the 222 crimes that are punishable by death in Britain were eliminated.

  • First electric chair death

    William Kemmler was the first person to be killed by the electric chair in Auburn Correctional Facility

  • Youngest execution

    George Junius Stinney Jr. was sentenced to death by electric chair at the age of 14 thus becoming the youngest American

  • The end of the death penalty in the United States

    The Supreme Court of the United States struck down capital punishment statutes in Furman v. Georgia, reducing all pending death sentences to life imprisonment at the time.

  • First innocent death

    Carlos DeLuna, was executed for the fatal stabbing of Texas convenience store clerk Wanda Lopez but in 2006 a Chicago Tribune investigation revealed groundbreaking evidence that Texas may have executed an innocent man in 1989

  • The first suicide on death row

    Scott Dozier was supposed to be killed with the fentanyl but he hung himself in his cell while waiting