Why Doesn't Michigan Have the Death Penalty?

Most people are surprised to learn Michigan doesn’t have capital punishment — and even more surprised by how long that’s been true. Michigan was the first English-speaking government anywhere in the world to abolish the death penalty for ordinary crimes.

The legislature passed the abolition in 1846, and it took effect on March 1, 1847. From that point on, the harshest punishment for murder in Michigan was life in prison, not execution. (There was a narrow exception left on the books for treason, which was finally removed in 1963.) Michigan has not carried out a state execution since before it was even a state — the last one under Michigan law was in 1830, seven years before statehood.

This wasn’t an accident or a loophole. It was a deliberate, principled choice that put Michigan ahead of nearly the entire world; only a couple of small jurisdictions in Europe had done it first. And Michiganders felt strongly enough about it that in 1963 they wrote the ban directly into the state constitution — making Michigan the only U.S. state with a constitutional prohibition on the death penalty, not just a law against it.

One footnote people get wrong: a single execution did happen on Michigan soil in 1938, but that was a federal execution under federal law (for a crime that fell under federal jurisdiction), which the state couldn’t prevent. Under Michigan’s own law, the streak is unbroken.