Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Mississippi.
Legal process When the prosecution seeks the death penalty, the sentence is decided by the jury and must be unanimous. If the jury recommends death, it is required to record what it considers the "aggravating circumstances" about the crime that led it to that decision.
In case of a hung jury during the penalty phase of the trial, the judge issues a life sentence, even if only one juror opposed death (there is no retrial).
The power of clemency belongs to the Governor of Mississippi.
Capital crimes
The following crimes are punishable by death in Mississippi:
Treason. Murder with one of the following aggravating factors: It was committed by a person under sentence of imprisonment. The defendant was previously convicted of another capital offense or of a felony involving the use or threat of violence to the person. The defendant knowingly created a great risk of death to many persons. It was committed while the defendant was engaged, or was an accomplice, in the commission of, or an attempt to commit, or flight after committing or attempting to commit, any robbery, rape, arson, burglary, kidnapping, aircraft piracy, sexual battery, unnatural intercourse with any child under the age of 12, or nonconsensual unnatural intercourse with mankind, or felonious abuse or battery of a child, or the unlawful use or detonation of a bomb or explosive device. It was committed for the purpose of avoiding or preventing a lawful arrest or effecting an escape from custody. It was committed for pecuniary gain. It was committed to disrupt or hinder the lawful exercise of any governmental function or the enforcement of laws. It was committed to influence the policy of a governmental entity by intimidation or coercion, or to affect the conduct of a governmental entity by mass destruction or assassination. It was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel. It was committed to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.
The laws on the books in Mississippi also provide the death penalty for aircraft hijacking under Title 97, Chapter 25, Section 55 of the Mississippi Code, but in 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kennedy v. Louisiana, that the death penalty is unconstitutional when applied to non-homicidal crimes against the person. However, the ruling meant that crimes "against the state" such as treason or terrorism would not likely be unconstitutional. Therefore, the offence of aircraft hijacking would likely be considered a crime against the state in Mississippi because it is widely considered to be an act of terrorism and the death penalty in this case may be constitutional.
Death row and executions Men on death row are held at Unit 29 in The Mississippi State Penitentiary, while women on death row are held at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF) in Rankin County."State Prisons ." Mississippi Department of Corrections. Retrieved on January 14, 2011.
Currently executions take place at the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) Mississippi State Penitentiary (MSP, also known as "Parchman") in Sunflower County."Media Kit Joseph D. Burns ." Mississippi Department of Corrections. 5/8. Retrieved on November 6, 2010. The condemned prisoner is moved into a holding cell adjacent to the execution room in Unit 17, the location of the execution chamber, in the MSP from their death row unit 48 hours prior to the execution. The state places MSP on emergency lockdown status 24 hours before the execution. At 12:00 PM, a media center at MSP opens. At 3:00 PM, the condemned's attorney of record and chaplain are permitted to visit the prisoner. At 4:00 PM, the prisoner receives their last meal and may shower at that time. At 4:30 PM, if the condemned desires, MDOC clergy may visit the prisoner. At 5:30, witnesses to the execution are transported to Unit 17. At 6:00 PM, officials move the condemned from the holding cell to the execution chamber. At the same time, the witnesses enter the designated observation areas and the execution by lethal injection is then carried out. At 7:00 PM, the state conducts a post-execution briefing with media witnesses. At 8:30 PM, the state closes its media center."Media Kit Joseph D. Burns ." (Archive) Mississippi Department of Corrections. 4/8. Retrieved on November 6, 2010.
The method is selected by commissioner of corrections among lethal injection, nitrogen hypoxia, electrocution and firing squad, but lethal injection is the "preferred" method. The Department of Corrections currently has a lethal injection facility, as well as a (currently unused) gas chamber.
The execution chamber was built in 2002, adjacent to the gas chamber, which is no longer in use but has not been disassembled.
Early history The State of Mississippi used hanging as its method of execution for much of its history. From the earliest recorded execution in 1818 to 2004, records indicate that the state executed a total of 794 people. Of these, the great majority were black males, who account for 639 of recorded executions.
On January 3, 1907, Will Harvey, a black man, was executed for the murder of another black man named Peter Brauner, despite the fact that Governor James K. Vardaman had decided to commute his sentence to life imprisonment. Harvey was not wrongfully convicted. It was undisputed that he shot and killed an unarmed Brauner without provocation over an unclear dispute. Nevertheless, after reviewing the case, Governor Vardaman decided to commute Harvey's sentence to life imprisonment. Prison officials only learned about the commutation three minutes after Harvey had already been hanged.
Mississippi also nearly wrongfully executed Will Purvis in 1894. Purvis was a member of the White Caps, a white supremacist terrorist organization similar to the Ku Klux Klan. He had been convicted of the murder of a fellow White Cap, who was assassinated after reporting the flogging of his family's black farmhand. Purvis survived his execution when the noose loosened around his neck and the mob threatened the riot to when the sheriff tried to hang him again. Purvis's death sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1895. He was pardoned in 1898 after the victim's brother admitted that he was mistaken about the identification of his brother's killer. In 1917, former White Cap member Joe Beard made a deathbed confession to his involvement in Buckley's murder and identified the killer as Louis Thornhill, who had since died.
Around the time of the 1901 opening of the Mississippi State Penitentiary (MSP) in Parchman, Sunflower County residents objected to having executions performed at MSP because they feared that Sunflower County would be stigmatized as a "death county." Therefore, the State of Mississippi originally performed executions of condemned criminals in their counties of conviction.Cabana, Donald A. "The History of Capital Punishment in Mississippi: An Overview ." Mississippi History Now. Mississippi Historical Society. Retrieved on August 16, 2010. When, in 1940, Mississippi's state legislature decided to change the state's method of execution to electrocution, while continuing to conduct executions in the county of conviction, a portable electric chair was developed and fabricated for the state's use. On October 11, 1940, the state's first execution of a condemned prisoner by electrocution occurred; Willie Mae Bragg, a black man convicted of murdering his wife, was electrocuted in his county of conviction, Jefferson Davis County. Interestingly, on the same day, Mississippi also carried out their final hanging in a different county when Hilton Fortenberry, another murderer, was put to death in Sharkey County. The state moved the electric chair from county to county, using it to kill condemned prisoners in their counties of conviction. One such example was Houston Roberts, a white man convicted of poisoning his granddaughter in Jackson. Mississippi and Louisiana were the only U.S. states to use a portable electric chair.
Around the 1950s residents of Sunflower County were still opposed to the concept of housing the execution chamber at MSP. In September 1954, Governor Hugh L. White called for a special session of the Mississippi Legislature to discuss the application of the death penalty. During that year, a gas chamber serving as an execution chamber was installed at MSP. The gas chamber replaced the portable electric chair which, between 1940 and November 10, 1954, had been moved from county to county to execute condemned prisoners. The final high-profile execution in a portable electric chair was that of Luther Carlyle Wheeler, a white man convicted of murdering a Hattiesburg police officer. He was executed on February 5, 1954, in the Humphreys County courthouse, where, as was customary in Mississippi at the time, the executioner placed the chair in the same courtroom where the jury had convicted the condemned man. Wheeler's execution was attended by a crowd of approximately 300 people. The first person to die in the gas chamber was Gerald Albert Gallego, who was executed for murder on March 3, 1955.
A major shift occurred during 1972 when the Supreme Court Case Furman vs. Georgia concluded that capital punishment was unconstitutional because it violated the Eighth Amendment, effectively halting state death penalty laws across the nation. This led to death sentences being lessened to life in prison; however, in 1976, the Supreme Court overturned their ruling in Furman v. Georgia. Gregg v. Georgia revived the death penalty on the basis that some cases, like murder, warrant the use of capital punishment and do not violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, which was ensured through bifurcated trials.
Since 1976 resumption of capital punishment nationwide
On July 1, 1984, the Legislature of Mississippi amended §§ 99-19-51 of the Mississippi Code; the new amendment stated that prisoners who committed capital crimes after July 1, 1984, would be executed by lethal injection. When the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF) opened in January 1986, all women who were incarcerated at MSP were moved to CMCF."A Brief History of MDOC." Mississippi Department of Corrections. Retrieved on May 4, 2023. The $41 million Unit 32, the state's designated location for male death row inmates, opened in August 1990."Prison won't cure overcrowding." The Advocate. September 18, 1990. Retrieved on August 9, 2010. "Hard-core Mississippi prisoners will be housed in a $41 million prison complex that opened last month, but the facility won't come close to providing room for all state inmates, officials say. The complex, called Unit 32, adds more than 15 times the current maximum-security bed space, but it's still not enough." Previously Unit 17 housed MSP's male death row.Straziuso, Jason. "Miss. prepares chamber for 1st execution since '89." The Advocate. July 14, 2002. News 10B. Retrieved on August 13, 2010. "The execution chamber is lodged in the back of Unit 17 on the Parchman campus. The unit once housed all death row inmates, but its 56 beds are no longer" On March 18, 1998, the legislature made another amendment, removing the gas chamber as a method of execution. The lethal injection table was first used in 2002.
Since 1976, Mississippi has executed fewer prisoners than six other southern states despite comparable homicide rates. As of October 2025, 25 inmates were executed after 1976. One critic claims that this stems from the inability of poorer counties to afford legal fees for defendants accused of capital crimes. Because death penalty cases are subject to a high standard of review—and there is a constitutional requirement for effective assistance of counsel as a matter of due process of law and subsequent appellate review—this has led to a practical and constitutional impediment to its operation.