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Article: Capital Punishment
- Article from:
- West's Encyclopedia of American Law
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CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
The lawful infliction of death as a punishment; the death penalty.
Capital punishment continues to be used in the United States despite controversy over its merits and over its effectiveness as a deterrent to serious crime. A sentence of death may be carried out by one of five lawful means: electrocution, hanging, lethal injection, gas chamber, and firing squad. As of 2003, 38 states employed capital punishment as a sentence; 12 states
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Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin
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and the District of Columbia did not.
The first known infliction of the death penalty in ...