1920, five states that had abolished the death penalty reinstated it. From the 1920s to the 1940s, there was a resurgence in the use of the death penalty due in part to the writings of criminologists who argued that it was a necessary social measure. Approximately 1,600 people were executed in the United States during the 1930s—more than during the two preceding centuries combined.3





In the 1950s, spurred by the civil rights movement focusing attention on the treatment of African Americans, scrutiny of the death penalty and its practice increased. Where 1,289 people were executed in the 1940s, 715 were executed in the 1950s and 191 between 1960 and 1976. A Gallup Poll in 1966 showed only 42 percent of the public supporting the death penalty.4





In 1972, the U.S.the death penalty. In 1986, the Court banned the execution of insane defendants and required a process for determining mental competency. At about the same time, it also ruled that states cannot execute anyone who was under age 16 at the time of committing a capital crime. A 2002 ruling said that executing a mentally retarded person violates the Eighth Amendment. In 2005, the Court banned the execution of juveniles.





Of the states with death penalty statutes today, five, including New Jersey, have executed no one since reinstatement. (New Jersey’s last execution was in 1963, when Ralph J. Hudson was electrocuted for stabbing his estranged wife to death.) In 2004, courts in Kansas and New York declared the death penalty violated those states’ constitutions; other states have considered taking