That one time in Michigan: When it was the first English-speaking government to abolish the death penalty
In Michigan, a death penalty ban was established before official statehood. Here’s how this restriction came to be and what it means for modern law.
If you’re looking for an impassioned debate, just bring up the death penalty. It’s a divisive topic that raises questions of morality, judgment, and justice—no matter which side you fall on.
Capital punishment is legal in 27 states, but Michiganders living today won’t recall a time when state-sponsored executions happened in the Great Lakes State. That’s because Michigan can claim a significant title in international history: In 1847, our state legislature became the first English-speaking government to outlaw capital punishment.
If you’re a Michigan history buff, you probably know that the 1847 date noted above was ten years after statehood was established. But the history of capital punishment in Michigan dates back to its earliest post-colonial days.
Of course, executions weren’t unheard of in pre-territorial Michigan. Records indicate that enslaved people, Indigenous North Americans, and some European-Americans were executed in the 18th and early 19th centuries in what is now known as Michigan.
The cases that changed everything
Though it was still merely a territory at the time, Michigan’s path to eventual abolition of capital punishment was kick-started in 1828, when a man named Patrick Fitzpatrick was convicted of sexually assaulting the daughter of a Detroit innkeeper. His sentence was death by hanging, and the public execution took place just across the border in Ontario. By 1835, though, it was clear that a mistake had happened during the judicial process, as another man made a deathbed confession to Fitzpatrick’s alleged crime.
In 1830, as Michigan inched closer to statehood, tavern keeper Steven Gifford Simmons was sentenced to death for violently beating his wife to death. In Simmons’ case, a trial by jury ensued in Detroit, but jurors heard only one day of testimony before a judgment and punishment were rendered. The public execution happened in downtown Detroit, but not without growing whispers of pushback from the public—including resistance from a sheriff named Thomas Knapp, who excused himself from execution duties due to religious beliefs.
Simmons’ death would be the last legal execution to take place under Michigan law. By the early 1830s, state leaders had begun to more seriously consider the practice of capital punishment, with Gov. Lewis Cass predicting that most crimes would soon be punishable “without the infliction of capital punishment.”
And he was right, at least in the case of Michigan: In 1837, the newly established state legally separated murder convictions into first- and second-degree classifications, allowing capital punishment only for first-degree cases.
Still, no state executions happened between 1837 and 1846, when legislators passed regulations allowing first-degree murder convictions to be punishable by a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole—and not death.
In passing this law, Michigan officially became the first English-speaking government to ban capital punishment. Thus, Michigan has not executed a single person since it was officially established as a state, and the death penalty was officially declared unconstitutional—not just illegal—in 1964.
Modern exceptions and controversies
Today, federal executions are an exception to Michigan’s death penalty ban, as crimes tried by federal courts can order the death penalty for inmates in any state, regardless of that state’s particular laws.
Interstate prison transfers can also be stumbling blocks.
Some Michiganders might recall the controversial case of Michigan resident Demetrius Frazier, who was sentenced to life for committing murder in 1992. When he was transferred from the Michigan Department of Corrections to a prison in Alabama, he was tried for another murder case—and sentenced to death under Alabama law, where the death penalty is permitted. While Frazier’s lawyers attempted to have him returned to Michigan in an effort to avoid the death penalty, authorities refused to approve his transfer.
Consequently, Frazier was executed in Alabama in early 2025, making him the first technical inmate in the Michigan prison system to die by capital punishment in an out-of-state facility.
Over the decades, efforts to challenge the death penalty ban in Michigan have been unsuccessful in earning enough petition signatures to warrant meaningful action. And so, for now, it seems Michigan’s abolition of capital punishment is here to stay.
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