On June 18, 2010, Ronnie Lee Gardner is scheduled for execution in Utah by firing squad. Regardless of one’s stance on the death penalty, the idea of execution by firing squad (or hanging) seems rather archaic. However, it is interesting to get a sense of how the death penalty is applied across the US.
For as long as there have been organized societies, capital punishment has been used to punish crimes, real or imagined, and to suppress political opposition. In 1972, the US Supreme Court determined in the collective cases known as Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), that Georgia’s capital punishment statutes were arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishment” clause because juries were given no guidance to determine whether a defendant deserved execution. In the aftermath of Furman, the Court voided forty state’s death penalty statutes.
Many states immediately began rewriting their death penalty statutes to remove the “arbitrariness” by giving judges and juries guidelines for determining whether a case warranted the death penalty, and also introduced aggravating and mitigating factors. These new statutes were approved by the Supreme Court in 1976 in the Gregg decision, 428 U.S. 153 (1976). The Court thus determined that the death penalty, as drafted under Gregg, did not violate the Eighth Amendment and reinstated the death penalty.
Since the Gregg decision, there have been 1,215 executions throughout the US. Fifteen states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico do not have, or have rescinded their death penalty statutes. And two states, Kansas and New Hampshire, while not abolishing the death penalty, have not had any executions since 1972. This means that executions in the US are carried out in thirty-three states.
The means of execution are as follows, listed in order by frequency of use: lethal injection, electrocution, lethal gas, hanging, and firing squad. Oklahoma and Utah provide for execution by firing squad as one means of execution while Delaware, New Hampshire, and Washington execution statutes provide for hanging as one means of execution. Washington’s second method of execution is lethal injection.
Although executions occurred here years before Washington became a state, the death penalty was enacted in 1904, abolished in 1913 and reinstated in 1919. It was abolished again under Furman in 1972.
In 1975, an initiative favoring the death penalty was passed by Washington voters. However, the state legislature enacted its capital punishment statutes in compliance with the constitutional guidelines approved by the Gregg decision in 1977. The current version of the death penalty statute was enacted in 1981, but has not been revised since 1998. Washington has executed a total of 109 in all, but only 4 people since reinstating its death penalty statute. And, in the time since the death penalty has been reinstated, one person has been exonerated.
Click the following links to obtain more information for or against the death penalty.
To read more about Mr. Gardner’s upcoming execution, click here or here or here.
To read more about the death penalty in Washington, click here or here or here.
To learn more about exoneration in Washington, click here.
Stay tuned for our upcoming podcast–an interview with former defense counsel Dan Riviera for convicted murderer Joseph Self.