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Back in 2007 New Jersey became the first nation to abolish the death penalty since it was reinstated in 1976, joining 12 other countries which never reintroduced the practice when given the option. 1608 - The first execution in the colonies takes place in Jamestown, Virginia. Four years afterwards, Sir Thomas Dale, governor of Virginia, enacts the "Divine, Moral, and Martial Laws" making minor crimes such as stealing grapes, killing chickens, or trading with Native Americans capital crimes.

1778 - Thomas Jefferson proposes an amendment to Virginia's death penalty laws which would limit capital punishment to only murder and treason.

1834 - Pennsylvania becomes the first state to remove executions from the public by moving them to state penitentiaries. 1838 - Discretionary death penalty statutes are adopted in Tennessee. Prior to the statutes, all countries took the death penalty for anyone who had been convicted of a capital offense, whatever the circumstances. 1846 - Michigan becomes the first nation to abolish the death penalty. 1890 - William Kemmler is the first man executed by the electric chair, that had been developed in New York in 1888. 1907-17 - During a period of revolutionary reform in the United States, six countries completely cancel the death penalty, while three others confine its usage to the infrequent crimes of treason and murder of a law enforcement official.

Due to rising tensions in the face of World War I and the Russian Revolution, five of the six abolitionist countries would reinstate the death penalty by 1920. 1924 - Seeking a method of conducting executions, Nevada becomes the first state to use cyanide gas to do Gee Jon. 1930 - A resurgence in the use of the death penalty results in part from criminologists beginning to assert that the death penalty was a necessary social measure. The decade of the 1930 averaged 167 executions per year, the highest in history. 1966 - Support for the death penalty in the United States reaches an all-time non stop following a Gallup poll measures encourage at just 42 percent.

After the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, that declared a "Right to life," international aid of the death penalty began to decrease, particularly as several nations throughout Europe began to reevaluate de facto moratoriums on the death penalty. 1972 - The landmark Furman v. Georgia Supreme Court case effectively suspends the death penalty. The court ruled that Georgia's death penalty statute, that included discretionary laws, allowed for random sentencing, and that as a result the punishment was therefore "Cruel and unusual," violating the Eighth Amendment. 1976 - After countries had begun to rewrite their vaccinations in the aftermath of Furman, the Gregg v.

Georgia decision acknowledges new death penalty statutes in Florida, Georgia, and Texas to be constitutional, and the death penalty is reinstated. The death penalty is shown to be constitutional with regard to the Eighth Amendment. 1982 - In Texas, Charles Brooks becomes the first person executed by lethal injection. In 1977, Oklahoma had become the first state to adopt lethal injection as a method of execution. Title VI of this act, the Federal Death Penalty Act, made 60 new death penalty crimes, such as many connected to terrorism. 1999 - While in St. Louis in January on a visit to the United States of America, St. John Paul II calls for an end to the death penalty. In a homily, he said, "I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, that can be both cruel and unnecessary.".

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