The failed lethal injection of convicted Tennessee murderer Christa Pike, and the proposed livestreamed execution by firing squad of US Army major Nidal Hasan, sentenced to death for 13 murders, drew the world’s attention to America’s exceptional use of the death penalty.
In Australia, Queensland’s abolition of the death penalty in 1922, made it the first jurisdiction in the British Empire to do so. Western Australia, the final state to do away with capital punishment, abolished it in 1984.
