List of people executed by lethal injection

Lethal injection is the practice of injecting one or more drugs into a person by a government for the express purpose of causing immediate death. While Nazi Germany was known to execute enemies of the state using an injection of lethal drugs, the first country to legalize and formally implement what is referred to today as lethal injection was the United States. The state of Texas adopted it as its form on capital punishment in 1977 and executed the first person by it, Charles Brooks Jr., in 1982.^[1] The practice was subsequently adopted by the other US states using capital punishment.^[2] As of 2025, the method is available for use by 27 US states, as well as by their federal government and military.^[3]

Lethal injection was proposed and adopted on the grounds it was more humane than the methods of execution in place at the time, such as the electric chair and gas chamber.^[2] Opponents of lethal injection reject this argument, noting multiple cases where executions have been either painful, prolonged, or both.^[4]^[5]^[6] According to the Death Penalty Information Center, lethal injections have the highest rate of botched executions of any method used in the US, with 7.12% of executions using this method between 1982 and 2010 considered to have not gone according to plan.^[7]^[8] A study published in The Lancet in 2005 found that in 43% of cases of lethal injection, the blood level of hypnotics was insufficient to guarantee unconsciousness.^[9] The Supreme Court of the United States ruled 7–2 in 2008 (Baze v. Rees), 5–4 in 2015 (Glossip v. Gross), and 5–4 in 2019 (Bucklew v. Precythe) that lethal injection does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.^[10]^[11]

Lethal injection was also adopted as a method of execution by Guatemala in 1996, China in 1997, the Philippines in 1999, Thailand in 2003, Taiwan in 2005, Vietnam in 2013,^[12] the Maldives in 2014^[13] and Nigeria in 2015.^[14] The Philippines abolished the death penalty in 2006.^[15] While the death penalty still exists in the Maldives and Guatemala, no executions have been carried out there since 1954 and 2000 respectively.^[16] Taiwan has never actually used the method, instead carrying out all executions by single gunshot.^[17] The US and China are the two biggest users of this method of execution. The US had executed 1,428 people via lethal injection as of February 2025.^[3] The number of people executed annually in China is thought to surpass all other countries combined, though the actual number is a state secret,^[18] and the percentage of people killed via lethal injection and the other method of execution used there, firing squad, is also unclear.^[19]

This alphabetical list features notable individuals up to January 2025, and only those where lethal injection can be reliably sourced to be the method of execution. The criterion for notability is either an article on the individual, or the crime they were executed for, in the English Wikipedia. This inevitably causes a bias towards US executions, as notable individuals in other countries such as Thailand and Vietnam may only have articles in their own language. A complete list of all executions in the United States can be found here.

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List of people executed by lethal injection

Executions

See also

References

Wikiwand - on

Name	Born	Died	Age	Nationality	Executed in	Executed for	Ref.
Jesús Ledesma Aguilar	1963	2006	42	American	Texas	Murder (2 counts)	^[30]
Charles Albanese	1937	1995	58	American	Illinois	Murder (3 counts)	^[31]
Jack Alderman	1951	2008	57	American	Georgia (US)	Murder	^[30]
Franklin DeWayne Alix	1975	2010	34	American	Texas	Murder	^[32]
Clarence Ray Allen	1930	2006	76	American	California	Murder (3 counts)	^[30]
Wanda Jean Allen	1959	2001	41	American	Oklahoma	Murder	^[30]
James Allridge	1962	2004	41	American	Texas	Murder	^[33]
Ronald Allridge	1960	1995	34	American	Texas	Murder	^[34]
Robert Anderson	1966	2006	40	American	Texas	Murder	^[30]
Stephen Wayne Anderson	1953	2002	48	American	California	Murder	^[35]
Alojs Andritzki	1914	1943	28	German	Nazi Germany	Making "hostile statements"	^[23]
Edgar Tamayo Arias	1967	2014	46	Mexican	Texas	Murder	^[30]
John Arnold	1955	1998	43	American	South Carolina	Murder	^[36]
Mark James Asay	1964	2017	53	American	Florida	Murder (2 counts)	^[37]
Herman Ashworth	1973	2005	32	American	Ohio	Murder	^[30]
Frank Jarvis Atwood	1956	2022	66	American	Arizona	Murder	^[38]
James Autry	1954	1984	29	American	Texas	Murder (2 counts)	^[30]
Manny Babbitt	1949	1999	50	American	California	Murder	^[39]
Wesley Baker	1958	2005	47	American	Maryland	Murder	^[40]
John Richard Baltazar	1972	2003	30	American	Texas	Murder	^[41]
Yuan Baojing	1966	2006	40	Chinese	China	Murder	^[42]
Velma Barfield	1932	1984	52	American	North Carolina	Murder	^[30]
James Phillip Barnes	1962	2023	61	American	Florida	Murder	^[43]
Odell Barnes	1968	2000	31	American	Texas	Murder	^[30]
Rocky Barton	1956	2006	49	American	Ohio	Murder	^[44]
Suzanne Basso	1954	2014	59	American	Texas	Murder	^[30]
John Battaglia	1955	2018	62	American	Texas	Murder (2 counts)	^[45]
Donald Beardslee	1943	2005	61	American	California	Murder (2 counts)	^[46]
Napoleon Beazley	1976	2002	25	American	Texas	Murder	^[30]
Betty Lou Beets	1937	2000	62	American	Texas	Murder	^[30]
Rodney Berget	1962	2018	56	American	South Dakota	Murder	^[47]
Glenn Lee Benner II	1962	2006	43	American	Ohio	Murder (2 counts)	^[30]
Brandon Bernard	1980	2020	40	American	Indiana	Murder	^[20]
Earl Wesley Berry	1959	2008	49	American	Mississippi	Murder	^[48]
Wilford Berry Jr.	1962	1999	36	American	Ohio	Murder	^[30]
Danny Bible	1951	2018	66	American	Texas	Murder	^[49]
Kenneth Biros	1958	2009	51	American	Ohio	Murder	^[30]
Arthur Gary Bishop	1952	1988	35	American	Utah	Murder (5 counts)	^[30]
Christopher Black Sr.	1959	2003	43	American	Texas	Murder (3 counts)	^[50]
Oscar Ray Bolin Jr.	1962	2016	53	American	Florida	Murder (3 counts)	^[51]