132 articles
List of punishments for murder in the United States
Punishments for murder in the United States, also called murder sentencing laws, range from prison terms to life without parole to capital punishment; 27 states, the federal government, and the military authorize the death penalty, with penalties varying by murder degree.
Lists of people executed in Texas
Lists of people executed in Texas record executions from George Brown's 1819 hanging to TDCJ's current death-row roster: 603 executions by October 2026, lethal injection since 1982, 600th in May 2026.
Lists of people executed in the United States
Lists of people executed in the United States: the Espy File (15,269 executions, 1608-2002), the DPIC Execution Database (post-1976), and BJS Capital Punishment statistics, covering federal and military executions separately.
Maggie Dickson
Maggie Dickson, "Half-Hangit Maggie" (c. 1702–c. 1765), a Musselburgh fishwife hanged in Edinburgh's Grassmarket on 2 September 1724 for infanticide, who revived in her coffin, was freed, and is remembered by a Grassmarket pub.
Mary Surratt
Mary Surratt, boardinghouse owner at 541 H Street, Washington, D.C., convicted of conspiring in Lincoln's assassination and hanged July 7, 1865; first woman executed by the U.S. federal government, tried by military tribunal, guilt still disputed.
Melissa Lucio
Melissa Lucio, first Hispanic woman sentenced to death in Texas, convicted 2008 of killing daughter Mariah; 2022 stay, 2024 innocence finding, 2026 CCA 5-4 denial.
Michael Bruce Ross
Michael Bruce Ross (1959–2005) was an American serial killer convicted of raping and murdering four women in eastern Connecticut, executed in 2005 after waiving his appeals.
Mock execution
Mock execution: simulated killing making a victim believe death is imminent, also called fake or staged execution. A form of psychological torture prohibited under the ICCPR and UN human rights findings, documented in Iraq and Iran cases.
Myuran Sukumaran
Myuran Sukumaran (1981-2015), Australian Bali Nine ringleader sentenced to death in Bali in 2006 for organizing an 8.3 kg heroin smuggling plot, became a painter on death row and was executed by firing squad on Nusakambangan in 2015.
Nick Yarris
Nick Yarris (Nicholas James Yarris, born 1961) is an American death row exoneree convicted in 1982 of the 1981 rape-murder of Linda Mae Craig in Pennsylvania, exonerated by DNA in 2003 after 21 years, subject of The Fear of 13.
Noose
Noose: a tightening rope loop, best known as the hangman's ligature in judicial hanging. Covers the long-drop mechanism, 9,322 U.S. hangings 1608–2002, botched hangings, and use in Iran, Japan, Taiwan.
Old Sparky
Old Sparky is a nickname for US prison electric chairs, most famously Texas's chair used for 361 executions (1924-1964), now at the Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville; other states' chairs share the name.
Posthumous execution
Posthumous execution is punishment inflicted on the already dead: Roman damnatio memoriae, Egyptian erasures, medieval burning of heretics' corpses, and England's Murder Act 1752 dissections.
Public executions in Iran
Public executions in Iran (اعدام در ملاء عام) are state hangings at dawn in public squares, often from truck-mounted cranes. Discretionary rather than legally required, they numbered 59 in 2013, 4 in 2024, and at least 10 in 2025.
Rainey Bethea
Rainey Bethea (c. 1909 – 1936), Black man hanged August 14, 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky for the rape of Lischia Edwards; widely recognized as the last public execution in the United States, before roughly 10,000 to 20,000 spectators.
Randall Dale Adams
Randall Dale Adams, American man wrongfully convicted of the 1976 murder of Dallas officer Robert Wood; David Ray Harris was the real killer. Exonerated in 1989 after Errol Morris's film The Thin Blue Line.
Richard Glossip
Richard Glossip, Oklahoma death row prisoner twice convicted of arranging the 1997 murder-for-hire killing of motel owner Barry Van Treese on Justin Sneed's testimony; conviction overturned by the Supreme Court in Glossip v. Oklahoma (2025), released on bail May 2026, retrial pending.
Ricky Ray Rector
Ricky Ray Rector (Rickey Ray Rector), 1950-1992, Arkansas man executed for the 1981 murder of Conway police officer Bob Martin despite severe self-inflicted brain damage; Governor Bill Clinton left the 1992 New Hampshire campaign to oversee his lethal injection on January 24, 1992.
Robert Roberson case
Robert Roberson case: Texas death row inmate Robert Leslie Roberson III, convicted of capital murder in 2003 for his daughter Nikki's death based on shaken baby syndrome, whose execution has been stayed three times amid disputed science.
Rodney Reed
Rodney Reed is a Texas death row inmate convicted in 1998 of the 1996 capital murder of Stacey Stites, maintaining his innocence while seeking DNA testing of the murder weapon.
Romell Broom
Romell Broom, Ohio death row inmate convicted of the 1984 rape-murder of Tryna Middleton, survived a botched 2009 lethal injection after 18 failed needle sticks; courts allowed a second attempt, but he died of COVID-19 in 2020.
Ronnie Lee Gardner
Ronnie Lee Gardner, Utah death row inmate convicted of the 1985 murder of attorney Michael Burdell during a courthouse escape attempt; chose death by firing squad and was the last US prisoner executed that way, June 18, 2010, until South Carolina resumed the method in 2025.
Ruth Ellis
Ruth Ellis, British nightclub hostess born 1926 in Rhyl, Wales; last woman executed in Great Britain, hanged at Holloway Prison 13 July 1955 for murdering David Blakely; granted a posthumous conditional pardon by King Charles in 2026.
Scott Dozier
Scott Raymond Dozier, Nevada death-row inmate #1011685, convicted of the 2002 murder of Jeremiah Miller, waived appeals to demand execution, was blocked by drug-protocol litigation, and died by suicide at Ely State Prison on January 5, 2019.
Sean Sellers
Sean Sellers (1969–1999), Oklahoma murderer executed February 4, 1999 for three killings committed at 16; the only post-1976 US execution of a 16-year-old offender, diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder after trial.
Shalom Nagar (שלום נגר)
Shalom Nagar (שלום נגר), Yemenite-born Israeli prison guard who hanged Adolf Eichmann on June 1, 1962, Israel's only judicial execution; identity kept secret for about thirty years before his 2004 interview; died 2024.
Stay of execution
Stay of execution: a court order temporarily postponing enforcement of a death sentence, granted under 28 U.S.C. §§ 2251 and 2262, Supreme Court five-vote rule, AEDPA limits, and 2024 emergency-docket practice.
Stoning
Stoning (lapidation, rajm) is execution by group stone-throwing. Known from Biblical law, developed as a zina punishment in Islamic law, authorized by nine countries but rarely used judicially; UN bodies deem it torture.
Summary execution
Summary execution: killing as punishment without full due process, defined by UN Special Rapporteur Amos Wako, prohibited by the 1989 UN Principles on extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions, with no superior-orders defense in war or emergency.
Teresa Lewis
Teresa Wilson Bean Lewis, Virginia death-row inmate executed September 23, 2010, for hiring Matthew Shallenberger and Rodney Fuller to murder her husband Julian and stepson Charles in 2002; first Virginia woman executed since 1912.