Death Row USA Summer 2021 Report: Fewest Death-Sentenced Prisoners in Three Decades Face Continuing Jeopardy of Execution

Fewer peo­ple were on death rows across the United States as of July 1, 2021 or faced con­tin­u­ing jeop­ardy of exe­cu­tion in pend­ing cap­i­tal retri­al or resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings than at any oth­er time in more than three decades, accord­ing to data com­piled by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) and ana­lyzed by the Death Penalty Information Center. 

In its Summer 2021 edi­tion of Death Row USA (DRUSA), released December 17, 2021, LDF report­ed that the num­ber of peo­ple on state, fed­er­al, or mil­i­tary death rows or fac­ing pos­si­ble cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing across the United States had fall­en to 2,474. It was the first time since the organization’s quar­ter­ly DRUSA cen­sus in April 1991 that few­er than 2,500 peo­ple were on death rows or faced jeop­ardy of being resen­tenced to death. LDF report­ed that 2,457 peo­ple were on U.S. death rows or fac­ing jeop­ardy of resen­tenc­ing at that time. 

The num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced to death or fac­ing reim­po­si­tion of the death penal­ty in pend­ing cap­i­tal pro­ceed­ings peaked at 3,717 peo­ple in the July 2001 DRUSA report. It has declined by more than a third (33.5%) since then, declin­ing every year for the past two decades.

The cap­i­tal con­vic­tions or death sen­tences of 229 peo­ple list­ed in the LDF report have been over­turned, leav­ing rough­ly one in eleven cas­es await­ing retri­al or resen­tenc­ing or with grants of relief still sub­ject to pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al appeal. Excluding those indi­vid­u­als, the num­ber peo­ple in the United States fac­ing active death sen­tences fell from 2,281 to 2,245.

LDF report­ed that 34.5% (853 peo­ple) of those on death row or fac­ing cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing as of July 1, 2021 were in states with mora­to­ria on exe­cu­tions. Including those in oth­er states whose whose death sen­tences have been reversed, LDF cal­cu­lat­ed that there were 1,034 cur­rent­ly unen­force­able death sen­tences, com­pris­ing 41.8% of all active cas­es in which a death sen­tence has been imposed. LDF report­ed that 1,440 death-row pris­on­ers had cur­rent­ly enforce­able death sentences.

California’s death row declined to 699 pris­on­ers but remained by far the largest in the nation. It was fol­lowed by Florida (338), Texas (198), and Alabama (171). Nationwide, 42.5% of death-row pris­on­ers were white, 41.1% were Black, 13.5% Latinx, 1.9% Asian, and 1.0% were Native American. Among states with at least 10 pris­on­ers on death row, Texas (72.7%), Louisiana (72.4%), California (67.2%), Nebraska (66.7%), and Pennsylvania (61.5%) were the states with the high­est per­cent­age of indi­vid­u­als of col­or on death row. Two per­cent of all death-row pris­on­ers are women.

The Summer 2021 DRUSA data comes on the heels of the release of the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics’ annu­al death penal­ty study, Capital Punishment 2020. BJS found that, after 20 con­sec­u­tive years of decline, 2,469 peo­ple were under sen­tence of death across the U.S. as of December 31, 2020, the first time few­er than 2,500 peo­ple were under sen­tence of death at the end of any year since 1991. BJS report­ed 2,465 peo­ple were impris­oned on the nation’s death rows at that time.

The vari­ance between the BJS and DRUSA num­bers for death row stems from the dif­fer­ent ways in which they define ​“death row.” BJS defines death row as those indi­vid­u­als cur­rent­ly impris­oned under a sen­tence of death. It includes cas­es DRUSA defines as ​“active death sen­tences” plus death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers whose cap­i­tal con­vic­tions or death sen­tences have been over­turned on appeal, but the appeal process has not yet been com­plet­ed. DRUSA’s def­i­n­i­tion of death row includes every indi­vid­ual sen­tenced to death who con­tin­ues to face the pos­si­bil­i­ty of exe­cu­tion. That encom­pass­es the BJS def­i­n­i­tion, plus indi­vid­u­als who are await­ing retri­als or resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings in which they are in jeop­ardy of being resen­tenced to death.