Notes

Debate Prep - Death Penalty (Capital Punishment) Questions

Answer each question in Red

How many people are executed each year in the US?
25 People
Which state executes the most people?
Texas 561 executions
How old was the youngest person executed? How many juveniles have been executed? 23 year old was the youngest person executed, 19 juveniles have been executed.
Why does it take so long to execute a convicted murderer?
Death row is a special placement in a prison that houses inmates awaiting execution after being convicted of a capital crime. If the jury agrees on death, the defendant will remain on death row during appeal and habeas corpus procedures, which may continue for several years.
How much does it cost to execute an inmate? 90k Per year
How much does it cost each year to imprison an inmate? 47k per year
What crimes are eligible for the death penalty? treason, espionage, murder, large-scale drug trafficking, or attempted murder of a witness, juror, or court officer in certain cases.
Which country executes the most people?
China
How many countries have the death penalty? 58 countries
Which democracies execute people? Democracy?

What percent of Americans support the death penalty?
In the October 2016 Gallup poll, 60% of respondents said they were in favor and 37% were opposed. Pew Research polls have demonstrated declining American support for the death penalty: 80% in 1974, 78% in 1996, 55% in 2014, and 49% in 2016.
What religious groups, if any, support the death penalty? Catholics
How often does the Federal government execute an inmate? (please note that federal and state laws differ) Only 3 inmates have been executed by the Federal Government.
Have any inmates been executed and were later found to have been innocent? About 156
How many states still have the death penalty? 30 states.
What method is used to execute inmates? Lethal injection
How many have been exonerated of their crime before being executed? More than 20 inmates since 1992
How many people are on death row? California (683), Florida (390), Texas (330) and Pennsylvania (218)
Have any people with mental disabilities been executed? No
What problems with execution have occurred by administering the death penalty, aside from lethal injection? inmates catching fire while being electrocuted, being strangled during hangings (instead of having their necks broken), and being administered the wrong dosages of specific drugs for lethal injections.
Can juveniles be given the death penalty? Since 1973, 226 juvenile death sentences have been imposed. Twenty-two juvenile offenders have been executed and 82 remain on death row.
Is the Death Penalty administered to crimes that do not involve murder? Which crimes?
All of the prisoners currently on death row and all of those executed in the modern era of the death penalty were convicted of murder. Historically, the death penalty was widely used for rape, particularly against black defendants with white victims. When the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, the Supreme Court left open the possibility of imposing the death penalty for offenses other than murder, such as rape or even armed robbery. However, the Court soon ruled that the death penalty would be unconstitutional for the rape of an adult where no death had occurred.
The chart below shows the number of people on death row at various years. What is the largest amount of people on death row over all years? How does that compare with 1955?
2000s had more deaths

How many women are on death row? How many women have been executed?
16 Women have been executed
Have lethal injection executions been botched? Describe an instance of a botched execution with Lethal Injection, detail what happened.
It is estimated that 3% of U.S. executions in the period from 1890 to 2010 were botched. In the 2014 book, Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty, Austin Sarat, a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, describes the history of flawed executions in the U.S. during that period. Sarat reports that over those 120 years, 8,776 people were executed and 276 of those executions (3.15%) went wrong in some way. Lethal injection had the highest rate of botched executions. In his book, he defines a botched execution as follows:
Botched executions occur when there is a breakdown in, or departure from, the “protocol” for a particular method of execution. The protocol can be established by the norms, expectations, and advertised virtues of each method or by the government’s officially adopted execution guidelines