For the first time in more than a quarter century, fewer than 2,500 prisoners across the United States now face active death sentences. According to the latest Death Row USA national census by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), released in early September 2018, 2,743 people were on death rows in 32 states and the U.S. federal and military death rows on April 1, 2018. That total includes 249 people who were previously sentenced to death but face the possibility of a capital resentencing after a new trial or new sentencing hearing and prisoners whose capital convictions or death sentences have been reversed, but whose reversals are still subject to appeal by the state. 2,494 other prisoners face active death sentences. The Spring 2018 death-row census reflects that death row has declined by 100 from the 2,843 reported on death row as of April 1, 2017, and by 17% over the course of the last decade. The overall decline in the number of people on death rows across the country is greater than the number of executions in that period, meaning that more former death-row prisoners have been resentenced to life or less after overturning their death sentences, died from non-execution causes, or been exonerated than have been added to the row with new death sentences. California (740), Florida (354), and Texas (235) remain the nation’s largest death rows. Of the jurisdictions with at least 10 people on death row, those with the highest percentage of racial minorities are Texas, Louisiana, and Nebraska, each at 73%. The last time LDF recorded fewer than 2,500 prisoners facing active death sentences in the United States was in January 1993, when the Winter 1992 Death Row USA reported that 2,483 of the 2,676 men and women then on death row had active death sentences.

(NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Death Row USA Spring 2018, April 1, 2018.) See Death Row and Studies.

Citation Guide