About 576 women have been executed in what is now the United States since the first recorded case in 1632, and only 18 of them have been put to death in the modern era that began in 1976. Women account for roughly 1% of the more than 1,580 executions carried out since the Supreme Court permitted capital punishment to resume.1Death Penalty Information Center. Executions of Women2Bureau of Justice Statistics. Capital Punishment, 2023 – Statistical Tables
The Colonial and Pre-Modern Total
Jane Champion, executed in the Virginia Colony in 1632, is the earliest documented case.3Death Penalty Information Center. The History of the Death Penalty: A Timeline From that point through the mid-20th century, women were sentenced to death for a wider array of offenses than exist under capital statutes today, including witchcraft and arson. More than a dozen women were hanged after the Salem witch trials of 1692 alone. Hanging was by far the most common method in the colonies, with burning at the stake and beheading also recorded; the electric chair and lethal gas came into use in the early 20th century.4Death Penalty Information Center. History of the Death Penalty
That long span ended in 1972, when the Supreme Court in Furman v. Georgia held that the death penalty as then administered violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments because it was imposed arbitrarily. The ruling emptied every death row in the country.5Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972)
Executions of Women Since 1976
Capital punishment resumed after Gregg v. Georgia in 1976, which upheld sentencing schemes that split capital trials into a guilt phase and a sentencing phase and required jurors to find at least one aggravating factor beyond a reasonable doubt.6Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976) Velma Barfield became the first woman executed under the new framework, by lethal injection in North Carolina in 1984.
The 18 modern-era executions of women break down by state as follows:
- Texas: 6
- Oklahoma: 3
- Florida: 2
- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Missouri, and Virginia: 1 each
- Federal government: 1
Every one of these executions used lethal injection. The federal case was Lisa Montgomery, put to death in January 2021 — the first woman executed by the federal government in more than 67 years.7Death Penalty Information Center. Entries Tagged With Lisa Montgomery The average interval between sentencing and execution for death row inmates overall had reached nearly 19 years as of 2020, and women’s cases follow the same extended appellate track.8Death Penalty Information Center. Time on Death Row
Women Currently on Death Row
As of October 2025, 47 women were held on death rows across the country, roughly 2% of the total death-sentenced population.9Death Penalty Information Center. Women California had the largest number with 16, followed by Texas with seven and Alabama with five. Arizona, Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina each held two or more.
No women remain on federal death row. In December 2024, President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people then on federal death row to life without parole, leaving three men whose sentences were not commuted. State death row populations shift slowly, changing only through executions, commutations granted by clemency or successful legal challenges, or deaths from other causes.10Death Penalty Information Center. Notable Grants of Clemency
Why the Numbers Stay Low
Women make up a small share of those charged with capital-eligible homicides in the first place, and the profile of women who reach death row is distinct. Research indicates that at least 96% of women on death row experienced gender-based violence before their incarceration, and more than half were convicted of crimes involving abusive intimate partners or their children.11Death Penalty Information Center. What to Know: Women and the Death Penalty
That history often figures into sentencing. The Supreme Court has held that jurors may consider any mitigating evidence they find relevant when deciding between death and a life sentence, and defense teams commonly investigate a defendant’s childhood abuse, mental health, and exposure to violence. For women defendants, those factors overlap heavily with domestic violence and sexual assault. The prevalence of that trauma among women who are nonetheless sentenced to death has fueled ongoing debate about how fully the capital sentencing system accounts for it.
The Bottom Line
Two figures answer the question. About 576 women have been executed on what is now U.S. soil going back to 1632. In the modern era since 1976, that number is 18, with 47 more women currently under death sentences in state prisons.