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Every Execution in U.S. History in a Single Map

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Updated April 25, 2017.

Arkansas’ closely watched string of capital punishments this month have drawn renewed attention to the difficulty that many states have in securing the necessarily drugs to conduct lethal injections. As of this writing, the state has executed three men in the past week and has a fourth execution scheduled for Thursday, ending a 12-year hiatus in capital punishments in the state just days before one of the necessary drugs expires.

The map above shows every legal execution by a state since 1776. Drag the red triangle to view the data at any point in time, or hit play to watch the map animate. Shrewd readers will note that the total figure in the lower righthand corner is significantly lower than the total in TIME’s chart of executions by method. This map only shows executions administered at the state level, not those implemented by the federal government or the military. Michigan, for example, has never executed someone since attaining statehood, but was the site to one federal execution.

Data for historical executions through 1976 are derived from research conducted by M. Watt Espy and John Ortiz Smykla. Data since the end of the hiatus come from the Death Penalty Information Center.

The source code for this project is available on Time’s GitHub page.

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Write to Chris Wilson at chris.wilson@time.com