18 U.S.C. § 3596
Section 3596 · Implementation of a sentence of death
This is § 60002 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994
Amended 1 time on record
Applied in 66 court decisions — leading case 20 Cal. 4th 936 - People v. Smithey (1999)
Most recently applied in Alfred Bourgeois v. T.J. Watson (December 2020)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
(a) In General.—A person who has been sentenced to death pursuant to this chapter shall be committed to the custody of the Attorney General until exhaustion of the procedures for appeal of the judgment of conviction and for review of the sentence. When the sentence is to be implemented, the Attorney General shall release the person sentenced to death to the custody of a United States marshal, who shall supervise implementation of the sentence in the manner prescribed by the law of the State in which the sentence is imposed. If the law of the State does not provide for implementation of a sentence of death, the court shall designate another State, the law of which does provide for the implementation of a sentence of death, and the sentence shall be implemented in the latter State in the manner prescribed by such law.
(b) Pregnant Woman.—A sentence of death shall not be carried out upon a woman while she is pregnant.
(c) Mental Capacity.—A sentence of death shall not be carried out upon a person who is mentally retarded. A sentence of death shall not be carried out upon a person who, as a result of mental disability, lacks the mental capacity to understand the death penalty and why it was imposed on that person.