Executions by Decade & Crime Charged in Colonial & Post-1776 USA

The “Espy File” is a database of executions in the United States and the earlier colonies from 1608 to 2002. This list of 15,269 executions was compiled by M. Watt Espy and John Ortiz Smykla, and was made available through the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.

This is a table showing executions by decade and crime charged incl: Accessory to Murder , Adultery , Aid Runaway Slave , Arson , Attempted Murder , Attempted Rape , Burglary , Concealing Birth , Conspiracy to Murder , Counterfeiting , Criminal Assault , Desertion , Espionage , Forgery , Guerilla Activity , Horse Stealing , Housebreaking , Kidnapping , Murder , Other , Piracy , Poisoning , Prison Break , Rape , Rioting , Robbery , Slave Revolt , Sodomy-Buggery-Bestiality , Theft , Treason , Witchcraft , unknown

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N.B.: This data separates out the actual crimes charged, i.e., if someone was executed for murder and rape, it would show up twice in the table. / red: murder / blue: anachronistic / green: property / navy:person / gold: state / gray: for those times when you execute someone but don't know why

Chart: craignelsen.substack.comSource: Executions in the U.S. 1608-2002: The Espy FileGet the dataEmbed Download imageCreated with Datawrapper