ABSTRACT
American executions, in one form or another, predate colonial times. In Native American cultures, tribal customs—as law professor Jeffrey Kirchmeier points out—"are allowed for something comparable to the death penalty". Archaeological and other historical evidence confirms that Native Americans were frequently killed or put to death even before Europeans reached the New World. Native Americans reportedly "executed enemies by torture", a form of capital punishment, though their preferred methods of execution differed from those employed by European colonists. The roots of America's death penalty are, in fact, intertwined with superstition, intolerance, and fear—and with slavery and the suppression of slave revolts. Since the founding of the United States of America in 1776, the country's death penalty has undergone some major changes, with the anti-death penalty movement's fortunes ebbing and flowing over time. Michigan abolished the death penalty in 1846 and, in the 1850s, Rhode Island and Wisconsin followed suit.
