Capital punishment in Wyoming

Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Wyoming.

Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the United States in 1976, Wyoming carried out only one execution: that of Mark Hopkinson in 1992 for ordering the murder of four people. As of March, 2022, there are no defendants who are sentenced to death in Wyoming. The last defendant who was sentenced to death, Dale Eaton, had his death sentence overturned by the federal court of appeals for the tenth circuit, and was resentenced to life imprisonment without parole in March, 2022.[1] [2]

Wyoming does not have a designated execution chamber, but the state has said it will use the parole board meeting room at the Wyoming State Penitentiary in the event an execution by lethal injection does occur in the future. The execution of Mark Hopkinson in 1992 took place in a converted holding cell at the since-closed North Facility of the Penitentiary.

  1. ^ "Prosecutors can seek-death penalty for Dale Eaton". kulr8.com. 24 July 2019. Retrieved October 30, 2019.
  2. ^ "Convicted murderer Dale Wayne Eaton re-sentenced 30 years after disappearance of Lisa Marie Kimmel". oilcity.news. 25 March 2022. Retrieved April 12, 2022.