Chad Daybell sentenced to death in Idaho: What US states still have capital punishment?

Chad Daybell, one-half of the nightmare team who carried out the Vallow–Daybell doomsday murders, has been sentenced to death in an Idaho court. Together with his wife and accomplice, Lori Daybell, they murdered their children and spouses in a story that is too horrific even to imagine. The two met in 2015, and just four years later, Lori´s second husband, Charles Vallow, was their first victim. In February 2019, things came to a head in the Vallow house with Lori telling Charles that she no longer loved him or the son they had together, J.J. She would then abandon her family for nearly two months, and in the meantime, Charles took filed for divorce, took out a protective order and altered his life insurance policy to name his sister as the beneficiary, instead of Lori.

The brutal murders

A few months later, Charles learned of the affair between his soon-to-be-ex wife and Chad Daybell, who was at the time married to a woman named Tammy. When Charles threatened to tell Tammy about the affair, she called her brother to ask him to be present when he came by to pick up J.J. Lori´s brother, Alex Cox, shot and killed Charles, claiming that he did so in self-defense and over his anger for alleged abuse suffered by his sister at her husband´s hands. Lori´s daughter, Tylee, was never seen alive again after 8 September 2019, while her younger half-brother JJ was last captured on a doorbell camera playing in the front yard on 23 September 2019. Lori took steps to cover up the fact that her children were missing and never informed the authorities. Authorities discovered the bodies of the two children on 9 June 2020.

Tammy, Chad´s wife, was found dead on 19 October 2019. At the time, the theory was that she had died of natural causes, but the investigation raised suspicions, particularly as the relationship between Chad and Lori was uncovered. Chad denied authorities the right to complete an autopsy, and only later, when a blood analysis was run, scientists discovered that she had been poisoned.

Lori and Chad were arrested in May 2020, and their trials took place in 2023 and 2024. On 30 May, Chad was sentenced to death for his role in the murders.

In what other states is the death penalty legal?

Chad committed the crimes in one of twenty-seven states where the death penalty is still legal.

The jury was able to sentence Daybell to death because of the ¨heinous nature of the crimes¨ and the fact that they were premeditated.

The United States stands alone among its peer nations in the fact that capital punishments can be issued in criminal court. Of the 37 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, only the United States and Japan can the state sentence a person to death through a criminal proceeding.

Other countries have taken a look at the research and found that the death penalty has little effect on reducing the murder rate.

The Death Penalty Information Center also found through polling that ¨Americans are willing to give up the death penalty if certain stringent sanctions are enforced.¨ Additionally, in the majority of US states, the sentences that the majority of those polled agreed would be a sufficient replacement for the death penalty are already on the books.