The Spring 2015 update to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s pub­li­ca­tion, Death Row, USA, reports that 3,002 men and women were on death rows across the United States as of April 1, 2015. This reflects a con­tin­u­ing decline in the size of death row, down 13% since Spring 2005, when 3,452 peo­ple were on America’s death rows. Several states saw sig­nif­i­cant drops in their death row pop­u­la­tions over that peri­od while car­ry­ing out few or no exe­cu­tions: Pennsylvania dropped from 230 to 184 (no exe­cu­tions), North Carolina fell from 197 to 157 (9 exe­cu­tions), and Idaho declined by half, from 22 to 11 (2 exe­cu­tions). The nation’s largest death row states are: California (746), Florida (401), Texas (271), Alabama (201), and Pennsylvania. The racial demo­graph­ics of death row nation­wide are 43% white, 42% black, 13% Latino/​a, and 2% oth­er races. Only 54 death row inmates (1.8%) are female. The most racial­ly con­cen­trat­ed death rows are Delaware (76% racial minori­ties); Texas (72%), Louisiana (71%), California (66%), and Pennsylvania (65%).

(NAACP Legal Defense Fund, ​“Death Row, USA,” April 1, 2015; DPIC post­ed June 17, 2015.) See Death Row and Studies.

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