Executions in U.S. by State Since 1930 and 1977 (Texas number one in both time periods)

The Bureau of Justice Statistics issued a report on December 11, 2011 that contained a table on page 15 with all executions by state since 1930 and since 1977.  Texas is by far the number one execution state in both time periods according to the BJS table, with 761 executions since 1930 and 477 since 1977.  The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has a list that goes back to 1924 and says that a total of 361 people were executed in Texas from 1924 to 1964. There was then an 18 year moratorium on executions in Texas, and add the 477 in the modern era for a grand total of 838 executions in Texas since 1924.

Texas Moratorium Network revised the BJS  table to include executions in 2011 and also added executions in Hawaii and Alaska that occurred after 1930, which were left out of the BJS table. Neither Alaska or Hawaii conducted any executions since becoming states in 1959. In the table below, a handful of states had zero executions since 1930, but there were executions in various numbers in all those states before 1930. The total number of all executions in the U.S. since 1930 is 5,104 . The total since 1977 is 1277.  The table below does not include all the many executions in states prior to 1930. If you count all known executions from the year 1685 to the present, Virginia is the number one state with 1,386 followed by Texas with 1,232.  You can see a list of executions since 1685 here, to which you have to add the ones in the modern era.

 

Note: Statistics on executions under civil authority have been collected by the federal government annually since since 1930. These data exclude 160 executions carried out by military authorities between 1930 and 1961.

Source: BJS, National Prisoner Statistics Program and Texas Moratorium Network

 

 

State                                      Since 1930                    Since 1977

Texas	761		477
Georgia	414		52
New York	329		0
North Carolina	306		43
California	305		13
Florida	239		71
Ohio	213		46
South Carolina	204		43
Virginia	200		109
Alabama	184		55
Mississippi	167		15
Louisiana	161		28
Pennsylvania	155		3
Oklahoma	154		96
Arkansas	145		27
Missouri	129		68
Kentucky	106		3
Illinois	102		12
Tennessee	99		6
New Jersey	74		0
Maryland	73		5
Arizona	62		28
Indiana	61		20
Washington	52		5
Colorado	48		1
Nevada	41		12
District of Columbia	40		0
West Virginia	40		0
Federal system	36		3
Massachusetts	27		0
Delaware	26		15
Connecticut	22		1
Oregon	21		2
Utah	20		7
Iowa	18		0
Kansas	15		0
Montana	9		3
New Mexico	9		1
Wyoming	8		1
Nebraska	7		3
Idaho	4		2
Vermont	4		0
South Dakota	2		1
New Hampshire	1		0
Alaska	3		0
Hawaii	8		0
Maine	0		0
Michigan	0		0
North Dakota	0		0
Wisconsin	0		0
Rhode Island	0		0
Minnesota	0		0
Totals	5104		1277

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