The death penalty—also known as capital punishment—refers to the process of state and federal courts sentencing persons convicted of the most serious criminal offenses (capital offenses or capital crimes) to death. The specific crimes and circumstances for which the death penalty is a potential punishment (usually murder) are defined by state and federal statutes enacted by state legislatures and the United States Congress, respectively.

These death penalty or capital punishment statutes are often located in the penal or criminal code, and often in the same statute that defines a criminal offense such as murder. Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia do not have the death penalty as a potential punishment for any criminal offense.

In Alabama, the death penalty is a legal form of punishment for certain capital offenses, primarily for cases involving murder. The state's capital punishment laws are outlined in the Alabama Code, particularly in Title 13A, which deals with the criminal code. Alabama allows the death penalty when certain aggravating circumstances are present, such as when the murder is especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel, or when it is committed during the course of another felony, among other conditions. The methods of execution in Alabama include lethal injection and, if lethal injection is found unconstitutional or otherwise unavailable, the electric chair. Alabama is one of the states that actively maintains the death penalty, and it conducts executions as prescribed by state law and in accordance with the United States Supreme Court's interpretation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.