In the 1972 case of Furman v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment as then practiced was unconstitutional, because it was applied disproportionately to certain classes of defendants, notably those who were black and poor (Berns 27).
In Gregg v. Georgia (1976), the court allowed capital punishment to resume in certain states; in 1977, Gary Gilmore, executed by a firing squad in Utah, became the first to die under the new laws. Today, 38 states have the death penalty and 32 of these have carried out at least one execution since 1976 (Amnesty). 12 states including the District of Colombia have no capital punishment statutes. A separate penalty phase during which the jury reviews mitigating circumstances and weighs the need for capital punishment, is now required in some capital cases. In 1982, Texas became the first state to execute a prisoner using lethal injection in which 75% of executions are administered this way (Barzilai). The gas chamber, hanging, the firing squad, and most commonly, the electric chair are still used in some states though Florida's electrocutions have been heavily criticized following several horrid malfunctions. It is no coincidence that Florida's governor happens to be Jeb Bush, brother of George W. Bush in Texas whose state leads all others in the number of electrocutions carried out.
The execution rate is rising to around 100 a year while it seems that Texas and Virginia account for more than half of all executions. Six of the retentionist states have had no executions since 1976 and seven of these have had 5 people or less on death row. New Hampshire is the only one of these to have no one on death row. California has an unbelievable amount of 561 on death row- the highest in the country and yet has had fewer executions than Delaware which has 1/43rd of California's population and has the highest execution rate in the U.S. (Berns 86).
