This course provides a general introduction to death penalty law and practice in the United States. We will explore the constitutional and legal structure of capital punishment (i.e., common law authority, state and federal statutes), the procedures regulating capital trials, judicial and executive review, and the seminal social scientific literature analyzing important aspects of capital charging-and-sentencing systems (e.g., deterrence, incapacitation, cost, wrongful convictions, arbitrariness/capriciousness, and bias).