Death Penalty – Fact Sheets


The Federal Death Penalty is Biased

The federal death penalty can be enacted in any state or territory of the United States, even in states that do not have the death penalty. The U.S. Attorney General, guided by the opinion of a five-lawyer panel, decides whether death will be sought.

In 1988, a new federal death penalty statute was enacted for murders committed in the course of drug trafficking activities. In 1994, the federal death penalty was again expanded to include some 60 different offenses. These include: murder of certain government officials; kidnapping resulting in death; murder for hire; fatal drive-by shootings; sexual abuse crimes resulting in death; car jacking resulting in death; as well as certain crimes not resulting in death, including the running of large-scale drug enterprises.

Between 1927 and 1963, the federal government executed 34 people, including two women. On June 11, 2001, Timothy McVeigh became the first federal death row prisoner to be executed in the United States since 1963.

Racial Disparities in Federal Death Penalty Prosecutions
According to a September 2000 Justice Department study on the federal death penalty, in 80% of the cases in which a federal prosecutor sought the death penalty in the last five years, the defendant has been a member of a minority ethnic group; in more than half the cases, the defendant has been an African-American.
According to an analysis of 146 cases prosecuted under the federal death penalty statute since 1988, 60% of white defendants avoided a death sentence through plea bargaining; only 41% of black defendants had the same outcome. (Source: The Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project)
Geographic Disparities in Federal Death Penalty Prosecutions
The September 2000 Justice Department study also found that about 40% of death penalty cases filed by 93 U. S. Attorneys came from five jurisdictions: Puerto Rico; the Eastern District of Virginia; Maryland; the Eastern and Southern districts of New York.
U.S. Attorneys who have most frequently sought federal death penalties are from states with high numbers of state executions.
There are now 23 defendants on federal death row under active death sentences. The majority were tried in just three states: Texas; Virginia; and Missouri.

The U.S. military has its own death penalty statute, though no executions have been carried out in over thirty years. Currently, seven men are on military death row.