Death Row USA Summer 2022 Report: Death-Row Population Continues Long-Term Decline

The num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced to death or fac­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a death sen­tence in pend­ing cap­i­tal retri­al or resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings con­tin­ued its more than two-decade decline in the third quar­ter of last year, accord­ing to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) Summer 2022 quar­ter­ly cen­sus of death rows across the United States. 

In its recent­ly issued Summer 2022 edi­tion of Death Row USA (DRUSA), LDF report­ed that the num­ber of peo­ple on U.S. state, fed­er­al, or mil­i­tary death rows or fac­ing pos­si­ble cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing had fall­en to 2,394 — 80 less than the pre­vi­ous year. LDF also found that the cap­i­tal con­vic­tions or death sen­tences of 195 peo­ple list­ed in its 2021 report have been reversed. 

As of July 1, 2022, LDF report­ed that 876 peo­ple, or 36.6% of those on death row or fac­ing cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing were in states with mora­to­ria on exe­cu­tions. Including those per­sons in oth­er states whose death sen­tences have been reversed, LDF cal­cu­lat­ed that there were 1,373 cur­rent­ly enforce­able death sen­tences, com­pris­ing 57.4% of all active cas­es in which a death sen­tence has been imposed.