Capital punishment in the United States
In 1972, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Furman v. Georgia that the way death penalty laws were written made them unconstitutional.  They ruled that sentencing rules were discriminatory, because black people got sentenced to death more often than whites for the same crimes.  Because of this, the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment, which violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.  This ruling stopped all executions in the country.  Between 1972 and 1976, there were no executions in the United States.