One hundred and fifty-eighty people, one hundred and fifty-six male and two female, were executed in the United States in 1947, 113 by electrocution, thirty-six by gas chamber, and nine by hanging.
Massachusetts carried out its last executions this year before abolishing the death penalty in 1984. South Dakota conducted its first and only execution by electrocution, that of George Sitts. Sitts was also the first person to be executed in South Dakota since 1913. The state had reinstated the death penalty in 1939 after initially abolishing it in 1915.
James Lewis Jr. became the last person to be executed in the United States for a crime committed at the age of 14.