Capital punishment in Rhode Island

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Rhode Island has a long but mostly abolitionist history when it comes to the death penalty. It was abolished for all crimes in 1852. The death penalty was briefly brought back in 1872 for murders committed while someone was already serving a life sentence, but no one was ever executed under that provision. In 1984, Rhode Island declared capital punishment illegal as cruel and unusual punishment in line with the U.S. Constitution.

Rhode Island has the longest period of any state without an execution. None have taken place since 1845, and no one has been sentenced to death in Rhode Island since 1975. From 1670 to February 13, 1845, 53 people were executed in the state, but only eight occurred after Rhode Island became a state. Half of the state’s executions happened on July 19, 1723, when 26 sailors were hanged for piracy.

The most common method of execution was hanging. There was at least one case of hanging and drawing and quartering, and one case of hanging and gibbet. A gas chamber was authorized in 1973 but was never used.

In 1979, the Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled that mandatory death sentences violated the 8th Amendment, and the two death-row inmates at the time, Sidney Clark and Robert Cline, had their sentences reduced to life in prison. In 1984, the legislature removed the mandatory death sentence language from the law. Since then, many bills to reinstate the death penalty have been proposed but none have passed.

A notable early case involved the murder of Amasa Sprague, which led to trials in the 1840s and the execution of John Gordon in 1845—the last execution in Rhode Island.