Capital punishment: by the numbers.

• Position: GRAPH > NATIONAL

As discussed in "The Death Penalty Debate," Americans are deeply divided over the issue of capital. punishment.

Thirty-eight states and the federal government currently have the death penalty. But some states where it is legal (New Jersey and New York, for example) have not carried out any executions since the Supreme Court Lifted its moratorium on capital punishment in 1976.

As this graph shows, the use of the death penalty in the states that have it varies greatly. It is used most often in the South, where there were 865 executions between 1976 and 2006. The Midwest was a distant second, with 122 executions. The West and Northeast had 66 and 4 execution respectively.

This graph shows the number of executions carried out between 1976 and 2006 in the 20 states with the most executions. Use the data in the graph to answer the questions below

[GRAPHIC OMITTED]

ANALYZE THE GRAPH

1. About how many people did the state of Missouri execute in the years between 1976 and 2006?

   (a) 46

   (b) 56

   (c) 66

   (d) 76

2. Which of the 20 states shown on this graph had the second-fewest number of executions?

   (a) California

   (b) Mississippi

   (c) Indiana

   (d) Utah

3. Nevada carried out 12 executions between 1976 and 2006, twice the number in--, the state bordering it to the east, and half that in--, a Midwestern state.

4. In 2005, Texas carried out about 5 percent of the total. number of executions in the state since 1976. How many executions were there in Texas in 2005?

   (a) 15

   (b) 17

   (c) 19

   (d) 21

5. Two states in the South carried out exactly the same number of executions between 1976 and 2006. These states are Louisiana and

   (a) Alabama

   (b) Arkansas

   (c) Georgia

   ...