Bureau of Justice Statistics, NAACP Legal Defense Fund Reports Document Ongoing Decline of U.S. Death-Row Population

The Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) have issued new reports doc­u­ment­ing the con­tin­u­ing his­toric decline of the death penal­ty across the United States.

On September 29, 2020, BJS released Capital Punishment, 2018 – Statistical Tables, doc­u­ment­ing that death row in the United States has decreased in size for 18 con­sec­u­tive years from 2001 to 2018. Two days lat­er, on October 1, 2020, LDF fol­lowed with the release of the Summer 2020 issue of Death Row USA, which report­ed that few­er peo­ple in the United States were on death row or fac­ing the reim­po­si­tion of the death penal­ty on retri­al or resen­tenc­ing than at any time since April 1992.

According to BJS, 2,628 pris­on­ers were under sen­tence of death in a total of 30 states and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment at the close of 2018, a 3% decline from the year-end 2017 total. Just three states — California (28%), Florida (13%), and Texas (8%) — account­ed for near­ly half of all con­demned pris­on­ers in the coun­try at year-end 2018.

Nineteen states across the United States held few­er pris­on­ers under sen­tence of death at the end of 2018 than when the year began, while only two states and the fed­er­al Bureau of Prisons had an increase. The states that expe­ri­enced the largest declines in the num­ber of pris­on­ers under sen­tence of death were Pennsylvania and Texas, each with 11 few­er pris­on­ers each. Pennsylvania had 10 cap­i­tal con­vic­tions or death sen­tences over­turned in the courts and two pris­on­er deaths in cus­tody, with no exe­cu­tions and one new death sen­tence. Texas had three con­vic­tions or death sen­tences over­turned in the courts and one guber­na­to­r­i­al com­mu­ta­tion against 13 exe­cu­tions and six death sen­tences or cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ings. Nationwide 64 pris­on­ers were released from death row as a result of court deci­sions (61) or com­mu­ta­tions (3), while 25 died by exe­cu­tion and 24 oth­ers died in cus­tody on death row.

BJS also report­ed that the aver­age time elapsed between a death sen­tence and exe­cu­tion in 2018 was 19 years, 12 months, down from 20 years, 3 months, but still the sec­ond longest since exe­cu­tions resumed in the U.S. in 1977. 

Death Row USA report­ed that 2,591 peo­ple were on U.S. death rows or in jeop­ardy of reim­po­si­tion of a death sen­tence as of July 1, 2020, the fewest since the organization’s Spring 1992 death-row cen­sus report­ed 2,588 on death row or in jeop­ardy of resen­tenc­ing. That marked a decline of 29 since the start of the year and 65 (2.4%) from July 1, 2019.

The num­ber of U.S. pris­on­ers fac­ing active death sen­tences also dipped slight­ly in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2020. A Death Penalty Information Center analy­sis of LDF’s death-row count found that 225 indi­vid­u­als whose con­vic­tions or death sen­tences had been reversed were await­ing retri­al, resen­tenc­ing, or com­ple­tion of the appeals process. That left 2,366 pris­on­ers fac­ing active death sen­tences, the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive quar­ter in which active death sen­tences declined by sev­en. Fifty-four few­er pris­on­ers (a decrease of 2.2%) faced active death sen­tences than the 2,420 whose death sen­tences were active as of July 1, 2019.

LDF report­ed that 893 peo­ple were sen­tenced to death or faced pos­si­ble cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing in the three states — California, Pennsylvania, and Oregon — with mora­to­ria on exe­cu­tions, rep­re­sent­ing 34.5% of the country’s death row. That left 1,517 pris­on­ers in 25 states, 58.5% of death row, with death sen­tences LDF clas­si­fied as active and enforceable.