History
The Crimes Act of 1790 created six capital offenses: treason, counterfeiting, three variations of piracy or felonies on the high seas, and aiding the escape of a capital prisoner.
The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 restored the death penalty under federal law for drug offenses and some types of murder. President of the United States Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, expanding the federal death penalty in 1994. In response to the Oklahoma City bombing, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 was passed in 1996. Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute became the only federal prison to execute people and one of only two prisons to hold federally condemned people.
Pre-Furman executions by the federal government were normally carried out within the prison system of the state where the crime was committed. Only in cases where the crime was committed in a territory, in the District of Columbia or in a state without the death penalty was it the norm for the court to designate the state in which the death penalty would be carried out, as the federal prison system lacked an execution facility.
Timothy McVeigh was executed on June 11, 2001, for his involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing. It was the first federal execution since 1963. Other executions by the United States include Juan Raul Garza on June 19, 2001, and Louis Jones Jr. on March 18, 2003. Sentences of death are now handed down by the jury, and the jury's decision is read and approved or disapproved by the judge. No recommendation for the death penalty from a jury has yet been refused by the judge at sentencing.
As of May 14, 2010, 52 male federal death row prisoners were housed at United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute. As of 2010, the two women on federal death row, Angela Johnson and Lisa M. Montgomery, are held at Federal Medical Center, Carswell. Two people have been re-sentenced since 1976 to life in prison and one was commuted to life in prison by President Bill Clinton in 2001.
Read more about this topic: Capital Punishment By The United States Federal Government
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