Sentencing Data

Death Sentences in the United States Since 1973

By State and By Year

SOURCES: DPIC’s Death Penalty Census and annual death sentence tracking. Each year, DPIC collects information on the number of death sentences in the United States. We contact state agencies, state death penalty organizations, and death penalty litigators, and review news reports to confirm the numbers. We only count the number of “new sentences,” i.e., we do not recount individuals who were sentenced to death in a previous year, had their sentenced overturned, and were resentenced in the current year. Sentences are only counted when a judge imposes the sentence, even though a jury may have returned a death verdict earlier.

Research for the Death Penalty Census is ongoing, and DPIC has identified three death sentences for which the year of sentencing is uncertain. Those three sentences are not included in the table above.

This page previously used data from the Capital Punishment Annual Reports produced by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). BJS counts only the most recently imposed death sentence for those individuals who were resentenced to death after their prior convictions or death sentences were overturned. BJS makes revisions to its national annual totals in subsequent reports, but does not provide information on which states’ totals have changed.


National Death Sentences by Year

YearSentences
Total8,957
Unknown3
19724
197345
1974172
1975310
1976234
1977157
1978213
1979167
1980184
1981255
1982279
1983254
1984285
1985274
1986325
1987293
1988305
1989265
1990251
1991275
1992272
1993290
1994290
1995307
1996316
1997268
1998285
1999276
2000226
2001165
2002171
2003144
2004130
2005137
2006110
2007125
2008114
2009111
2010109
201178
201278
201380
201471
201550
201631
201739
201843
201934
202018
202118
202221