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Watt Espy kept a series of index cards, grouped mainly by state, that records information about executions on American soil (colonies, states, territories) since the 1600s. Some cards contain lots of information, including name, place of execution, method, and details of the crime. Other cards have very little information aside from the fact that someone was executed. Sometimes there is not even a name—just "two slaves" or "pirate". There are additional categories for federal, military, and indigenous executions. There are two different card sizes; for the 3x5 inch cards, each state, territory, or other main division is identified with a manila tab. Subdivisions are marked with blue, unlined cards and are intended to mirror the arrangement of materials in Series #2 as closely as possible.

This series comprises the bulk of Watt Espy's primary and secondary research and is therefore the largest in the collection. Initially, approximately half of these documentation of execution records were arranged in an organized fashion alphabetically by state, or by federal, military, tribal or international categories and then alphabetically by an individual's name. The others were not arranged in any discernable scheme with a significant amount of materials kept as unorganized loose documents in boxes. Espy marked some files as "not written up," but it was ultimately unclear how these differed from other records. After careful review, the archivists decided to combine all of the documentation of executions together, divided the records into five subseries for executions conducted by all 50 states and the District of Columbia, federal executions, military executions, indigenous executions, and international executions, and subsequently arranged and inter-filed all the loose materials.

This series features administrative records of Watt Espy's efforts to chronicle every government-sanctioned execution in the United States as part of his Capital Punishment Research Project. Espy was the only full-time employee of this organization although he worked with paid graduate assistants while at the University of Alabama School of Law.

The Watt Espy subject files contain a variety of materials that supplement information in the other series without necessarily being directly related. Researchers will find background information on the history of capital punishment, death penalty statistics, and a few files on crime in general. There are folders devoted to crime and punishment in many individual states and territories, though not all of them are represented. The subject files also contain information on the various methods of execution employed across the country, mainly hanging, gassing, electrocution, and lethal injection. Additionally, there are death penalty-related topics such as physician participation, editorial pieces dealing with ethics of capital punishment, execution of prisoners with low IQs, background materials on the death penalty in early America, and a few assorted death penalty research projects that Espy followed. There are also assorted photos, many of which feature inmates and prisons. Images of identified and unidentified individuals executed are presumed to be the ones that filled the walls of Espy's house.