Capital punishment in Alabama

In some years, its courts impose more death sentences than Texas, a state that has a population five times as large.

[12] According to the Alabama Department of Corrections, 31 persons were executed by the state for crimes other than murder - including rape, robbery and burglary - between 1927 and 1959.

[13] In Kennedy v. Louisiana,[14] the U.S. Supreme Court has essentially eliminated the death penalty for any crime at the state level except murder.

The 1972 U.S. Supreme Court case Furman v. Georgia, requiring a degree of consistency in the application of the death penalty, established a de facto moratorium on capital punishment across the United States.

That moratorium remained until July 2, 1976, when Gregg v. Georgia decided how states could impose death sentences without violating the Eighth Amendment's ban against cruel and unusual punishment.

Holman Correctional Facility has a male death row that originally had a capacity of 20, but was expanded in the summer of 2000 with the addition of 200 single cells in the segregation unit.

In the process, the execution team punctured Hamm's bladder and femoral artery, causing significant bleeding.

[24] In 2020, the Alabama Court of the Judiciary charged Todd with an ethics complaint lodged by the Judicial Inquiry Commission,[25] which accused the Birmingham judge of using her position to oppose and override the state death penalty.

[32][33] In late 2024, Matt Simpson, an Alabama politician, proposed a Death penalty bill for child rapists, that could ultimately challenge the precedent of Kennedy v. Louisiana.